Germans are so scared of surveillance they microwave their ID cards

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/14/germans-are-so-scared-of-surveillance-they-microwave-their-id-cards/

by Libertatea • 11 years ago

54 53 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

mtgx• 11 years ago

I mean those silly Germans - they just can't take a joke about their own government as well as their partner, the U.S., spying on them and then using that information for their own economic interests or other more malicious reasons.

Lighten up!

octatoan• 11 years ago

"online formulas"

I'm guessing this was translated from German or something; isn't form "Formular" in German?

Hermel• 11 years ago

It is.

CognitiveLens• 11 years ago

The casual xenophobia in this headline and article are crazy. Really, "Germans are so scared...", "Germans can’t take a joke."?? We must have a little more nuanced view of the situation than that - just because there is a group of people doing something in a certain country doesn't mean that we should push the message that it is representative of the whole population. Wow.

maze-le4• 11 years ago

Yep, thats about it, besides some hackers and hipsters, I don't know people over here who would even consider this. FYI, I didn't do it, I have a metal casing, that works as a faradays cage, to counter unwanted RFID emissions.

ThePhysicist6• 11 years ago

To be precise it's not only our ID cards that we like to microwave but above all our passports.

The reason is that 2005 a new generation of passports was introduced, which contain RFID chips that can be read out wirelessly over a distance of a few centimeter (or in some cases even a few meters). In the beginning, these chips only contained a digital version of the information on the passport, i.e. the name, passport ID and photo. However, since 2007 the chips also contain the digitized fingerprints of the passport holder. Various organizations such as the Chaos Computer Club showed how easy it was to access that information and demonstrated that such access could even be done unknowingly to the passport owner, e.g. when walking by a (hidden) reading device with your passport in your pocket. So, quite a nightmare from a privacy perspective.

Back to the microwaving: While it is required to have a valid traveling passport if you wanna go abroad (i.e. outside the EU), it is NOT (yet) required to have a passport with a working RFID chip. Simply putting your passport into your microwave oven for a few seconds will irreversibly destroy the RFID chip while leaving the passport intact => Privacy problem solved :)

So the next time someone tells you that Germans are not very pragmatic or too obedient just tell them that we are microwaving our passports ;)

(I edited the first line to reflect the fact that they primarily talk about ID cards in the article, thanks to _more_original for pointing this out)

more_original• 11 years ago

To be precise it's not our ID cards that we like to microwave but our (travel) passports.

No, this article is about ID cards. The new ID cards, introduced a few years ago, also have RFID chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_identity_card

ThePhysicist6• 11 years ago

I think they might have gotten it wrong in the article, since travel passports are a much bigger problem than ID cards (which also contain RFID chips), because the former contain more sensitive information. In particular, storing fingerprint information is optional (i.e. decidable by the card holder) for the ID card but mandatory for the travel passport.

sancha_• 11 years ago

Don't know if he changed his comment, but your cite is missing the word 'only'.

ThePhysicist6• 11 years ago

Concerning the legality of destroying the RFID chip: The article mentions that one person was arrested in Frankfurt airport when officials detected that he had microwaved his passport (or ID card), and that he would possibly be facing jail time for tampering with official travel documents.

In my legal opinion, while your passport is property of the Federal Republic of Germany and thus not yours to do with as you please, it is a big difference if you willingly try to alter the information on the passport, or if you destroy part of the digital information in the passport. While the former might be considered a crime it is hard to imagine that the latter would be punishable by more than a small fine.

masklinn• 11 years ago

User dao- notes that the original source[0] says they weren't arrested, only provided with a temporary replacement and their damaged id confiscated.

[0] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/mann-erhitzt-personala...

matthewmacleod• 11 years ago

Simply putting your passport into your microwave oven for a few seconds will irreversibly destroy the RFID chip while leaving the passport intact => Privacy problem solved

Don't passports remain the property of the issuing state in most cases? I'd be concerned that deliberately altering it and attempting to travel could be a legal problem.

ThePhysicist6• 11 years ago

Yes that's indeed true, see my comment above.

leni5362• 11 years ago

What is the effectiveness of RFID shields? Tampering with the passport is really a nono.

ThePhysicist6• 11 years ago

That's also an option and there are some commercial providers, e.g. this one:

http://www.pointprotect.de/

dagw2• 11 years ago

There's an old, but fairly comprehensive, consumer report article from 2011 that concludes: "When Recursion’s security experts tested 10 types of shields and wallets currently being sold to protect contactless cards, they found that none blocked the signal completely, and there was dramatic variability even among samples of the same brand."

I don't know if the situation has improved much since then.

richmarr3• 11 years ago

To be fair, allowing the arbitrary and (practically) undetectable leaking of fingerprints is also a no-no.

bitL• 11 years ago

I use them for all my credit/ID/etc. cards now. They should lower the maximal distance for reading so that someone has to be super close to your card to read anything. It's not 100% but for practical purposes should be sufficient (e.g. rogue RFID reader at the airport reading all passing by cards from 1m distance etc.)

maze-le4• 11 years ago

Very good. I made some tests, back when I was at the university. We had a Hardware Lab with Radio-Test Equipment and RFID Readers/Writers.

I have this one:

https://shop.digitalcourage.de/thema/stoprfid/rfid-nfc-myfar...

It just works. The Signal/Noise-Ratio and amplitude of the RFID-Signal (in the casing) is just too small, to trigger a rfid response.

jacquesm2• 11 years ago

Alternative solution to the finger print problem:

http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-belt-sander-and-the-battle-fo...

That way you don't have to nuke your passport, it simply makes sure there are no prints on it in the first place and for a bonus it also makes sure that the local municipality (which wouldn't know a database breach if they were hit over the head with it) doesn't have them.

hyperdunc• 11 years ago

Is the idea to temporarily remove the prints just before applying for ID or is the process more permanent?

holri• 11 years ago

One can learn a lot from people that had suffered nazis and stasi not so long ago.

BjoernKW• 11 years ago

Well, and they've got every reason to be. The NSA and American airport security theatre made the world a place where microwaving your ID card actually makes a lot of sense.

sales of old-school typewriters were reported to have skyrocketed

That's awful journalism and hearsay at best. Typewriter sales didn't skyrocket. Some authorities, notably services related to government and parliament bought some typewriters after the NSA breach and the most recent parliament security breach because they just couldn't trust their digital equipment anymore.

dagw2• 11 years ago

Typewriter sales didn't skyrocket.

If you dig back through the sources to the original quote you'll also find this further quote from the same salesperson of a typewriter company talking about their sales number:

"We’ve seen an increase because Brother left the market"

So he only said their sales went up, not the total demand for typewriters, and while he had seen some increased orders from various defense and security services, he attributed it largely to one of their biggest competitor leaving the market.

I also wonder how much the hipster movement has contributed to the increased sales in typewriters?

lcswi• 11 years ago

Yeah, and Americans are fat gun-wielding christians.

saiya-jin2• 11 years ago

well, many of them are, just not all :) not that there is anything wrong with gun wielding, or being christian (nobody is perfect after all), that fat aspect not so much

Tomte2• 11 years ago

Let me fix that headline: "a few hundred Germans are so scared of surveillance they microwave their passports".

progx2• 11 years ago

And if millions know that microwaving destroy the chip but the passport is still usable... did you still think it will be only "a few hundred" ?

Tomte2• 11 years ago

Yes. Well, maybe a few thousand.

saiya-jin2• 11 years ago

if you actually use it for travel, sooner or later it will be revealed by some security wanting to scan your malfunctioning passport. By fixing one problem you create another

DrinkWater• 11 years ago

Deutschland: Das Land der Dichter, Denker und Paranoiden.

The article is a bit overblown, we are not really that scared. Actually most people don't care or even understand the implications. But privacy is a very big and deep-rooted thing.

These German microwave shenanigans are around for quite some time, but i haven't met one single person that microwaved ids or passports.

progx2• 11 years ago

Yes, most of the people don't scare.

Some days ago i need a new Travel Passport and i felt not good when they want my fingerprint. It feel like you are a criminal.

Did not know until now that microwave can destroy the chip, but i will think about it.

I am not paranoid, but I did not see any advantage or higher security with my saved fingerprint.

pgeorgi2• 11 years ago

Since you're referring to the Dichter & Denker trope: that was originally about Germany having no copyright in the 18th century, so access to the works of the poets and philosophs was affordable and widespread.

So it doesn't refer to lots of poets and philosophs (Germany was probably below average) but to the wide distribution of their writing.

(my favorite anecdote from that time: Goethe, at some point, cited his own works. Since he didn't lug all that stuff around he worked from a copy he bought. Unfortunately it was an unauthorized copy containing modifications, which he didn't notice - and copied into his citation)

cautious_int• 11 years ago

Why not put it into a Faraday cage?

richmarr3• 11 years ago

This is actually a good point.

Rather than putting your ID card or passport in a microwave (and breaking the law), you could just use an RFID-blocking wallet or passport holder.

pgeorgi2• 11 years ago

Like everything sold on https://shop.digitalcourage.de/thema/stoprfid/ (the 'support shop' of an organization doing privacy advocacy)

TheLoneWolfling2• 11 years ago

Because you still, presumably, need to take it out of the Faraday cage to use it.

dao-• 11 years ago

"On Tuesday, a 29-year old man was arrested at Frankfurt Airport after authorities noticed that he had microwaved his German identification card"

No he wasn't. The source (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/mann-erhitzt-personala...) linked to from the article says police confiscated the damaged ID card and gave the man a temporary replacement, and he could continue his travel.

Yet another glitch in this rather poor article. (Others have already pointed out other flaws that I won't repeat.)

dmichulke• 11 years ago

In 2010, a governmental survey came to the conclusion that it would “take ten years for the document to establish itself.”

This is because they have a validity of 10 years, nothing security related.

jensen123• 11 years ago

In the future, I think it's far more likely that the US or UK will have a really horrible government, than Germany. Because the US and UK governments have been pretty good for such a long time, most people in those countries are not aware of the importance of privacy. And when the horrible government comes along, there will already be plenty of surveillance in place that it can use to tyrannize people.

flohofwoe• 11 years ago

More like incredibly pissed and disillusioned than scared (in the US-meaning, not UK-meaning of 'pissed'). The article reads like us Germans are a bunch of tin-hat weirdos, and indeed, pre-Snowden I would have agreed and laughed at these silly people who think they're watched at every step, it's all just conspiracy theories right, it's all over since 1990, the secret service has no longer power over people etc etc etc?

Post-Snowden is an entirely different world, and I feel like the last 25 years were for nothing. The worst and silliest conspiracy theories turned out to be indeed true. The 'Free West' which was such a powerful and wonderful vision for the East German youth turned out to be just another variation of a surveillance state, just with a prettier paint-job.

So yeah, I'm incredibly pissed at the German and US governments and the secret services. The sad thing is that nothing at all would change with a different government.

[edit: typos]

furyg3• 11 years ago

It's unclear to me why there needs to be any biometric information at all, on an ID card for use in a modern country like Germany. A chip-and-pin card with a ID number on it and your name (the latter simply so that you don't mix up your card with that from someone else). All the rest goes in a database.

The police can look up your "Virtual ID card" based on your ID number or from other information (a fingerprint, retina scan, name, etc.). Non-security institutions (other government agencies, a bank, whoever) do so only with your permission... you put your card into a smart reader, confirm with your pin, and your "virtual ID card" is shown to the person confirming your identity.

All access to the system is logged (including the police) so that the user can see who's pulled up his info.

netcan• 11 years ago

How did difficult to assail ideas like Freedom of Speech come about?

I mean, speech can obviously be dangerous, lead to actions, incite, etc. But, unlikeable speech will garner some support when repressed because freedom of speech must be preserved.

When it comes to surveillance and a lot of other liberty relevant stuff, we don't seem to be able to draw lines. Regulations, promises and policies seem to be enough "as long is it doesn't get into the wrong hands."

What we end up with is a predictable immediate slide. Surveillance laws enacted to allow authorities to pursue terrorists are used in general policing. Financial restrictions enacted to fight organized crime, and "money laundering" end up restricting financial freedoms of anyone getting caught up in the "risk review" dragnet and being denied basic financial services.

Anyway, Germany and their living memory of the Stazi is a potential flag bearer for the freedoms that we are losing quickly.

jamesbrownuhh• 11 years ago

"scared of" is not an acceptable synonym of "opposed to".

Germans are so scared of surveillance they microwave their ID cards

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