Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 1:22 PM -0700 on 7/7/02, John Young seems a little irony-impaired today: Bob Open Mike Hettinga kariokaed: I try not to post news to cypherpunks. :-). I post *lots* of news to the dbs list, of course... To prevent spamming DCSB is subscriber only, as are all my own lists. Rolling in the phsst-shot EVA, shitting my spacesuit, wailing for yo momma's impaired irony: gameboy, that's not a joystick. My Younglish parser is a bit rusty, but methinks the gentleman doth defecate too much. I seem to remember someone who boosted his own karma rating around here for a while by posting full NYT articles to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Young stopped. I did too. Of course, it took a nastygram from NYT's lawyers to stop him. And, since the NYT doesn't read cypherpunks anymore, :-), it took a surprisingly polite request from Mr. May to (more or less :-)) stop me a few years back. I believe he actually said please, and included no threat of physical force, which was, frankly, shocking, given our relationship at the time. So, I continued to send stuff to e$pam, which we folded, and DCSB, which got the same reaction as cypherpunks so I quit there, and, later, dbs, which doesn't matter because I own the list. Oddly enough, dbs' subscribership has stabilized and gone up a smidge since, which is nice. I also send crypto-relevant bits to cryptography, which Perry moderates, sending along what he thinks the readership wants to see, which might be what John's mewling about above. Of course, I haven't checked my killfile, but I bet Choate still persists in posting un-contexted links here, which are, for the most part much more annoying, though considerably more parsimonious of bandwidth. It must be all that hard groundwater in Texas causing extreme hard-headness in character. In Young's and my case, it got diluted by all that acid rain up here in the NE, and we eventually learned to listen to reason, if not threats of impecuniosity and/or bodily harm. For Choate, of course, who's still drinking the stuff, there's apparently no hope. Anyway, John, for old time's sake, a little Spanglish aphorism is in order: Y tu mama tambien, Cabron. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSm9r8PxH8jf3ohaEQL/GgCg9G1Vr130geUAVn3BrqD8Vp1QykgAniJ8 OuY/1rqCI4BzWEwGgVusKowt =E4kl -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
At 10:16 AM -0700 on 7/6/02, Bill Stewart wrote: Bob - This isn't really cryptography-related, and I can't post to DCSB, but this does seem like Cypherpunks material I try not to post news to cypherpunks. :-). I post *lots* of news to the dbs list, of course... To prevent spamming DCSB is subscriber only, as are all my own lists. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
Bob Open Mike Hettinga kariokaed: I try not to post news to cypherpunks. :-). I post *lots* of news to the dbs list, of course... To prevent spamming DCSB is subscriber only, as are all my own lists. Rolling in the phsst-shot EVA, shitting my spacesuit, wailing for yo momma's impaired irony: gameboy, that's not a joystick.
Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
At 10:16 AM -0700 on 7/6/02, Bill Stewart wrote: Bob - This isn't really cryptography-related, and I can't post to DCSB, but this does seem like Cypherpunks material I try not to post news to cypherpunks. :-). I post *lots* of news to the dbs list, of course... To prevent spamming DCSB is subscriber only, as are all my own lists. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
Bob Open Mike Hettinga kariokaed: I try not to post news to cypherpunks. :-). I post *lots* of news to the dbs list, of course... To prevent spamming DCSB is subscriber only, as are all my own lists. Rolling in the phsst-shot EVA, shitting my spacesuit, wailing for yo momma's impaired irony: gameboy, that's not a joystick.
Re: Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists
Bob - This isn't really cryptography-related, and I can't post to DCSB, but this does seem like Cypherpunks material. What an insert several paragraphs of sailor-type language here/ outrageous proposal! Can't sail without some government fingerprinting you, laser-scanning your eyes, and throwing you in a huge database? more nautical language/. I'd expect the ILO to be socialist - they are a big union after all - but I wouldn't expect them to be totalitarians. Sure, it's a way to create a harder-to-avoid union card, and a way for their biggest customers to be forced to hire their people by using government pressure to enforce it. It's also a surveillance mechanism to let management keep track of sailors they dislike, prevent politically incorrect people from getting jobs as sailors, give governments additional control over sailors in port, private sailors, and refugees who can't afford to travel on airplanes, and gives large governments an increased excuse to interfere with high-seas traffic between other countries under the pretense of checking whether all the sailors are documented. From a technology perspective, the interesting paragraph is The plans have drawn criticism from seafarer's groups concerned that port authorities may insert information in so-called ``smart'' identification documents without the cardholder's knowledge. Sure, smart cards with non-user-viewable data can easily have extra data in them saying the user is a Communist or union organizer or did scab labor or is a Muslim or a Jew or a Rastafarian. And it's easy for port authorities to send copies of sailors' photos to their local police in case they're wandering around town. But with the Internet reaching everywhere, either by wire or satellite, the information doesn't need to be hidden in the card. The card says that you're Sailor #12345678, so they can look you up on any website they want - not just the ILO's paid their union dues database, and Interpol's Never been caught smoking dope database, and the shipping companies' Not a union troublemaker database, and the originally from _this_ country even though they're now American database, and Blacknet's databases on gets in Bar Fights and scab laborers. Bill Stewart At 06:10 PM 07/03/2002 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?ptitle=Top%20World%20Newss1=blktp=ad_topright_topworldT=markets_box.hts2=ad_right1_windexbt=ad_position1_windexbox=ad_box_alltag=worldnewsmiddle=ad_frame2_windexs=APSMyZRY2U21hcnQg Bloomberg News Top World News 07/03 13:20 Smart ID Cards Planned for Sailors to Spot Terrorists (Update1) By Amy Strahan Butler Washington, July 3 (Bloomberg) -- The identities of more than 500,000 commercial sailors worldwide would be verified through thumb or iris scans under tough, new anti-terrorism standards backed by the U.S. and other industrialized nations. ``The whole idea is to come up with a worldwide system for positive, verifiable identification of seafarers,'' said Mary Covington, associate director of the Washington office of the International Labor Organization, a United Nations-affiliated group that's developing the standards. The labor organization got a big boost when representatives of the Group of Eight nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Canada, Italy and Russia -- endorsed the standards during a meeting in Canada last week. The plans have drawn criticism from seafarer's groups concerned that port authorities may insert information in so- called ``smart'' identification documents without the cardholder's knowledge. Those concerns are being swept aside as the drive to close loopholes in shipping security has gained momentum since Sept. 11 in the U.S., where less than 2 percent of cargo entering ports is inspected by the U.S. Customs Service. After the terrorist attacks, the Coast Guard began requiring ships to notify ports 96 hours prior to arrival and to submit a list of crew members. Card-Carrying Sailors Commercial sailors in countries that ratify the ILO standards would be required to carry identification cards similar to driver's licenses that also contain biometric information, such as a thumbprint or iris scan. Under the proposal, port authorities would be able to verify the identity of the card bearer by scanning his thumb or eye. The credentials could be issued to more than a half-million shipping employees as governments attempt to tighten port security to prevent terrorist activities. ``This would help produce uniform treatment of seafarers,'' said Chris Koch, president of the World Shipping Council, a trade association representing more than 40 shipping companies, including Atlantic Container Line AB and Crowley Maritime Corp. ``That's in the interest of not only seafarers but of commerce.'' The current ILO convention for identifying shipping employees entering foreign ports asks that countries to provide seafarers with
