Passports (and e-Voting Update)

Several days ago I got up early and went to the US embassy to get a new passport. It has 3 years until it expires, but I wanted to get mine replaced before they start manufacturing RFID-enabled ones. This would give me 10 years of RFID-free travelling, which would hopefully be enough time for the government to sort out the mess the new passports are shaping up to be:

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged. [...] They're not increasing security at all." Grunwald says it took him only two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip. Most of that time he spent reading the standards for e-passports that are posted on a website for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that developed the standard.

Unfortunately I would have to wait 2 weeks for the new passport to arrive, and by that time I won't be in Santiago. It might be just as well, because the lady at the US services desk couldn't guarantee that the new passport wouldn't contain an RFID chip. She did give me a strange look, as if to say, "you must be one of those wacky conspiracy theorists." She couldn't understand why I wanted to replace my passport before it expired.

I'm starting to wonder how long it will take before the US gets a significant number of people in government who grasp technology. Money seems to be pouring into worthless IT projects all the time.

In some slightly positive related news, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has recommended that e-voting machines be decertified for future elections. It's up to states to decide whether or not to follow the guidelines, but after millions of dollars wasted and many voting problems, it's a step in the right direction.