June 27, 2005 | Farber Knows Funny.

The feds are going to prohibit doormen, convenience store clerks and hotel desk guys from staring too long at passports, in order to crack down on identity theft, according to this deadpan fake news story posted to Dave Farber's excellent Interesting People email list.

This story, ostensibly written by longtime New York Times tech reporter John Markoff, goes something like this:

In a measure designed to stop identity theft and immigration
fraud, the Department of Homeland Security is considering
prohibiting the "excessive examination", "undue scrutiny"
and the photocopying of identity cards and passports. The
new measure, currently under administrative review, is
scheduled to take effect in September 2005.

The new rules illustrate the difficulty of building strict
identity tracking into a world economy. Every person who
examines a driver's license or a passport learns all of the
information necessary to create a fake document. Anyone who
makes a photocopy of a passport can use the data to steal
that person's identity.

"We've had cases where clerks would insist on photocopying
the passport of a new job applicant and then turn around and
sell a copy to some illegal immigrant. I shudder to think
what could have happened if that clerk was connected to al
Queda." said Robert Barnes, the Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Information Assurance at the Departmet of Homeland
Security. Mr. Barnes's group is responsible for designing
the new regulations.

The rules under review do not offer any firm limits on how
long someone may look at a passport or driver's license,
simply choosing to forbid "excessive examination". Earlier
versions including strict limits of first 5 seconds, then 10
seconds, and finally 7 seconds were all rejected because of
concerns they might run afoul of laws protecting handicapped
people.

"We're not going to be starting any stopwatches", said Mr.
Barnes in a telephone interview. "But if someone looks like
they're memorizing a driver's license or passport number,
we'll be able to act."

Nicely done by some fine prankster...

Posted by Ryan Singel at June 27, 2005 11:29 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.secondaryscreening.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/206

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Farber Knows Funny.:

» Farber Knows Funny. Fake ID theft story from Privacy Digest: Privacy News (Civil Rights, Encryption, Free Speech, Cryptography)
Farber Knows Funny. [Read More]

Tracked on June 29, 2005 06:00 AM