funsec mailing list archives
Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID?
From: "Randy Abrams" <abrams () eset com>
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 18:23:42 -0700
Please go read up on asymmetric encryption, PKI, certificates, CAs, etc. Then come back and tell me how you are going to counterfeit Microsoft website's certificate...
I am reminded of a quote in, off all things, a book on robotics that went something to the effect of "if you only see one solution you probably don't understand the problem." If I want to counterfeit Microsoft's website certificate then I have an exceptionally difficult task, however if that is what I am trying to do then I am probably going after something entirely different and there will be a variety of approaches that will work. Not the web site certificate, but when I worked at Microsoft there were two Microsoft digital certificates issued by Verisign to people who did not work for Microsoft... Hence the impetus to turn on certificate revocation in IE. As for freedom (and civil liberties) being an illusion, that's not exactly true. There are some remnants left that are worth fighting for... They just don't happen to be in Iraq. Cheers, Randy ________________________________ From: C Q [mailto:kyle.c.quest () gmail com] Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 6:12 PM To: Randy Abrams Cc: Fergie; privacy () whitestar linuxbox org Subject: Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? At least here you tried to provide some reasoning behind your statement... That's progress :-) Once again, I'd like to revisit the scenario with money. Please tell me are most bills counterfeit? Yes, there's a problem with people counterfeiting money, but it's not an epidemic. And it's actually easy to counterfeit our money... Their protection mechanisms are pathetic :-) If we have really good id cards. It will be much harder to counterfeit them. It's not about impossibility... it's about reducing the possibility. Besides... even if the crooks will manage to counterfeit the cards to make them visually similar there will still be a matter of having to deal with digital fingerprints, etc. That won't be that easy to counter fit. Please go read up on asymmetric encryption, PKI, certificates, CAs, etc. Then come back and tell me how you are going to counterfeit Microsoft website's certificate... As for freedom... I got news for you. There's no such thing. Especially in the US. It's an illusion... And it's been gone for many many years. I have lived in other countries, so I can share my first hand experience that a lot of times you have much more freedom elsewhere... And another thing about freedom... it's a relative concept. For example, the drivers in Germany are fighting the Green Party that wants to impose a 120km (about 75 miles) speed limit. The German drivers are saying that it's their right... a free man should be able to go as fast as he wants from point A to point B. Speaking of driving... where's this freedom thingie you are referring to... when you are forced by law to wear a seatbelt as if the government owned your body and soul... On 5/18/07, Randy Abrams <abrams () eset com > wrote: And yet it will not accomplish either. It will add a product line to the black market. Criminals with funding will buy the technology to beat the ID card, and will also sell excellent counterfeits on the black market, making it harder to discover an illegal alien. For the law abiding American it will only facilitate government tracking. It's simply a proposal that no American who values freedom at all could accept as anything less than an assault on the rights and freedoms of the innocent. Cheers, Randy ________________________________ From: C Q [mailto:kyle.c.quest () gmail com] Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 5:54 PM To: Fergie Cc: privacy () whitestar linuxbox org Subject: Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? You are right. I didn't word it correctly. I meant to say that I talked about those two issues. Yes, one of the main benefits behind introducing National ID is to have better tools in preventing what you mentioned (the whole pilot license thing). I agree that this should really be about that and less about controlling illegals. It's just that website with the original article tried to get immigration into the mix. I just had to say something about that... On 5/18/07, Fergie <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - -- "C Q" <kyle.c.quest () gmail com> wrote: >There are two issues here: >1. National ID and its benefits >2. Illegal aliens and their impact on the lives of the people who live in >the US. > Actually, no. Number 2 should be "Prohibiting terrorists from obtaining pilot's licenses." It is nothing less than disingenuous to color this debate on a National ID card as an illegal immigration control issue. After 11 September 2001, the _entire_ impetus for a National ID card (née Real ID) was to put into a place a mechanism to identify people who weren't supposed to be here -- namely terrorists. - - ferg -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.1 (Build 1012) wj8DBQFGTkhrq1pz9mNUZTMRAqLTAJ9AraT0TjCuDmw2G0rCxfnrCxndygCfXgMn 9vfBYaUI/sTGG4275HrhoD4= =cKDF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ privacy mailing list privacy () whitestar linuxbox org http://www.whitestar.linuxbox.org/mailman/listinfo/privacy
Current thread:
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID?, (continued)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Brian Loe (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Brian Loe (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Brian Loe (May 23)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? C Q (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Randy Abrams (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? C Q (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Randy Abrams (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? C Q (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Alex Eckelberry (May 18)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? C Q (May 19)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Valdis . Kletnieks (May 19)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Alex Eckelberry (May 19)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? C Q (May 19)
- Re: [privacy] Social Security Card to be National ID? Brian Loe (May 23)