When I heard only 5% of you have passports, I was shocked, that means, that like, whats 5% of 300 million, 15 million. How many of that 15 million have money, about 14 milion probably broke and living off the state, so that leaves about 1 million that actually travel abrioad. That 1 million is probably going to Canada or Cancun on Spring break or something. Is America the most uncultured country on the planet?

i think you have to go to a country to experience the real culture, if you experience it from immigrants its not the same they water their shit down to me.

Jigga, give me a few grand and I'll gladly visit your "home country"

Of course! You should know I lived there! You were at the old apartment.

RFID chips?

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is a small object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. RFID tags contain silicon chips and antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags require no internal power source, whereas active tags require a power source.

State Department e-passport pilot under way
By Wilson P. Dizard III
Contributing Staff Writer

The State Department started pilot production of electronic passports earlier this month and plans to roll out e-passports for the general public this summer, officials said.

The senior official in charge of the project also said that technical issues raised recently about e-passport security would not prevent the general distribution of the documents.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, said in an interview this morning that the department is using e-passport technology provided by Infineon Technologies North America Corp. of San Jose, Calif.

Moss said Infineon’s components for the e-passport have been approved by National Institute of Standards and Technology testing. The company provides contactless chip radio-frequency identification device technology that stores biographical data in machine readable form.

Infineon’s chip and a small antenna are embedded in the passport cover, which also includes a metal shield to prevent eavesdropping on data flowing from the passport to the reading machine.

Three other companies—Axalto Inc. of Austin, Texas; On Track Innovations Ltd of Ft. Lee, N.J.; and ASK of Sophia Antipolis, France—also have e-passport chips that NIST is testing.

"It is premature to say whether all of those will make it through the NIST tests," Moss said, adding that the chips must pass the tests before State would buy them.

Digital passports produced by the federal government comply with a standard forged by the International Civil Aviation Organization, as do all e-passports deployed or under development worldwide. In recent weeks, that standard has come under questioning from a Dutch RFID testing laboratory and a domestic technology analyst.

In recent weeks, a Dutch RFID testing laboratory, Riscure BV of Delft, has issued a statement that it has been able to crack the encryption of the Dutch e-passport using a PC in two hours. According to RFID specialist Harko Robroch of the Dutch laboratory, "An attacker intercepting the contactless communication between the passport and the border control system can get access to the personal information held on the chip inside the new passport."

Robroch stated that sequential relationships between the Dutch passport numbering scheme and the key used to encrypt personal information sent from the passport to the reader device reduced the number of possible encryption methods for the personal data.

He urged Dutch authorities to improve the security of their passport encryption.

A second criticism of the State passport technology came from Joseph Anlage, president and chief executive officer of ALDC, which reportedly is a startup company involved in laser technology. Anlage issued a statement asserting that State’s technology for storing facial images on passport chips would not provide reliable data.

Moss rejected both lines of attack on the technology that State has adopted. He said that the U.S. passport has more layers of security than the Dutch document. They include a metal shield to help protect against interception of data transmitted between the passport and the reading device. In addition, State has adopted Basic Access Control, a means of securing the data transmission between the passport and reader and "random uniqueness," which is a more secure encryption key than the Dutch passport.

Taken together, the State Department methods provide "security in depth," Moss said.

Additional questions about the security of the ICAO standard have been raised by federal officials, who noted that a technical committee of the organization has been meeting to plug possible security loopholes in the standard.

Moss acknowledged that an ICAO technical committee recently met in Rome to consider strengthening the security of the encryption key used to secure data flowing from the passport to the reading device. The committee, reviewing a technology known as "entropy," is considering lengthening the key by including alphanumeric data from the second line of the machine readable zone of each passport as well as the data from the first line, which is already included.

Moss said the questions that have been raised about the security of the passports "do not represent a fundamental problem that must be corrected [before the documents can be widely distributed]."

Wilson P. Dizard III is a staff writer for Washington Technology’s sister publication, Government Computer News.

So they're actually doing this or is this just paranoia on your part?

Stealing identities is a fairly serious issue. There's no need to slag Freddie.

So they're actually doing this or is this just paranoia on your part?

What?

I'm not slagging him, just saying that there wasn't anything in his post to say that this is going on.

Are passports required to visit Canada or Mexico?

i'm going to italy this summer we can meet up norton.

oh Norton...don't take the kids to romantic Italy!

i think you have to go to a country to experience the real culture, if you experience it from immigrants its not the same they water their shit down to me.

The US is the size of Western Europe plus a good bit of Eastern Europe, too. We have more natural wonders, a wider climate range (I could surf the Dawn Patrol & ski in the afternoon here in SoCal), world class museums, orchestras & theater, and better Chinese food.

I don't think immigrants water their culture down to themselves, just to those outside of their culture. I've been in Dim Sum houses in San Gabriel where I was one of 3 people in the place who spoke English (and I brought one of the other two with me), and you can believe there was no watering down of the culture in there. Have you ever been in an Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurant? They don't often cater to tourists, and they definitely don't water down their culture. Yes, you can get some mean pasta dishes in Eritrean places, but that's because they were invaded by the Italians before WW II, not beacuse they're catering to anyone outside of the culture.

How many people here have their Passport? I do (of couse I've micowaved it to ensure that any RFID chips're dead, but that's just me).

Yeah at the end of the day I could be in Paris within 3 and a half hours of leaving my house. Are some Americans so insular that they won't even leave the state they are born in? Yes. Do lots of Americans want to travel abroad but don't have the time or the money? Yes.

Are Europeans benefitting from a massive drop in the cost of travelling inside Europe (also helped by the slackening of border control for EU citizens) and worldwide. Yes. 30 years ago going on a plane was a thing only rich people did. Now I could get a flight to nearly any capital city in Europe for under $20.

How far away are the Carribean islands from the US? I've done the 10 hour flight to those on 4 occasions (and visted the US 5 times) an all inclusive holiday to the Carribean islands is as cheap as a holiday to Spain from the UK if you know where to look.

Effective this year, yes. You used to be able to use a birth certificate and photo ID.

I agree that the size/diversity of the US, and relative scarcity of vacation time contribute to fewer American's travelling abroad, but I do think there's more at play. . . .

American's are very ecocentric in all facets of life -- think of politics, news, sports, etc. I think travel is just an extension of that. Yeah, we can see mountains and oceans in the US, but what about the history that you get in the other continents? Some culture can't be transported by immigrants, but not many of us are interwested enough to try and go experience it.

I should admit that the farthest I've ever travelled is Mexico, so I'm in no way wordly. Actually in the process of applying for my first passport so I can get to Ireland this summer.

should I microwave my driver's licence, just in case?

For the past several months I've been in and out of Europe, and feel like such a loser everytime I come back to America.

its even more sad when i look at my school's study abroad program. here, you can study abroad for a whole semester for basically a grand more than normal tutition. what the real killer is is that on average, per semester, only two students on average utilize and take advantage of this. seriously i wish i knew about it sooner because i would have been in like europe or something right about now.

I wouldn't be surprised if Americans probably travel more than any other country's citizens, due to the cost/affluence/available transportation.

Yeah, it's just really fucking cheap for us all to hop on a goddamn plane and fly to another country/continent.

You goddamn euros are always on holiday...you get more time off than we do, it's cheaper for you to explore your countries, it's a no brainer that you guys travel more.

There's really nothing that interesting in America. Serious.

oh, that's not fair. there's plenty interesting in America, what's pathetic is that we don't think there's anything interesting elsewhere. living in america is like swimming in the middle of the ocean ... can't see anything else for miles.

Name 3-7 things that are interesting in America.

1. the grand canyon
2. highway 1 in CA
3. road to hana in maui
4. alaska. everything about it.
5. the rocky mountains
6. texas. (you might not like it, but it sure fits the definition of "interesting")
7. baseball (yes, trite; still, nothing beats summer day + beer + peanuts + wrigley field)
8. art museums (Art Institute - french impressionism collection rivals that of the Louvre; MoMa)
9. excellent peanut butter, cookies, and milk (esp. in WI)
10. MUSIC. our music kicks ass, let's face it (have you ever been to a european disco?)
8. her fabulous cities: Chicago, NY, DC, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. etc...

yes, there's plenty of wonderful (and arguably) 'more interesting things' in europe, but for just one country, we sure have a shit-ton of stuff.

7. baseball (yes, trite; still, nothing beats summer day + beer + peanuts + wrigley field)
8. art museums (Art Institute - french impressionism collection rivals that of the Louvre; MoMa)
9. excellent peanut butter, cookies, and milk (esp. in WI)
10. MUSIC. our music kicks ass, let's face it (have you ever been to a european disco?)
8. her fabulous cities: Chicago

1. the grand canyon
2. highway 1 in CA
3. road to hana in maui
4. alaska. everything about it.
5. the rocky mountains
+NY, DC, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, etc...

man, i'll give you texas, but i won't concede these ...
happy to appease you.

I've been to the Grand Canyon. It's a big hole in the earth. Kind of like that quarry you drive by on the highway towards Indiana.

yep, it's just like midwestern rock quarries ...

and for the others? (AK, HA, CA, cities?)

LOL at Hawaii.

I've never been to Alaska.

San Francisco is okay. LA sucks.

don't insult Hawaii with internet-speak.

yes, especially you brits ... strongest currency in western world = helpful.