Entries Tagged "forgery"

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TSA Misses the Point, Again

They’re checking IDs more carefully, looking for forgeries:

Black lights will help screeners inspect the ID cards by illuminating holograms, typically of government seals, that are found in licenses and passports. Screeners also are getting magnifying glasses that highlight tiny inscriptions found in borders of passports and other IDs. About 2,100 of each are going to the nation’s 800 airport checkpoints.

The closer scrutiny of passenger IDs is the latest Transportation Security Administration effort to check passengers more thoroughly than simply having them walk through metal detectors.

[…]

More than 40 passengers have been arrested since June in cases when TSA screeners spotted altered passports, fraudulent visas and resident ID cards, and forged driver’s licenses. Many of them were arrested on immigration charges.

ID checks have nothing to do with airport security. And even if they did, anyone can fly on a fake ID. And enforcing immigration laws is not what the TSA does.

In related news, look at this page from the TSA’s website:

We screen every passenger; we screen every bag so that your memories are from where you went, not how you got there. We’re here to help your travel plans be smooth and stress free. Please take a moment to become familiar with some of our security measures. Doing so now will help save you time once you arrive at the airport.

I know they don’t mean it that way, but doesn’t it sound like it’s saying “We know it doesn’t help, but it might make you feel better”?

And why is this even news?

So Jason—looking every bit the middle-aged man on an uneventful trip to anywhere—shows a boarding pass and an ID to a TSA document checker, and he is directed to a checkpoint where, unbeknown to the security officer on site, the real test begins.

He gets through, which in real life would mean a terrorist was headed toward a plane with a bomb.

To be clear, the TSA allowed CNN to see and record this test, and the agency is not concerned with CNN showing it. The TSA says techniques such as the one used in Tampa are known to terrorists and openly discussed on known terror Web sites.

Also relevant: “Confessions of a TSA Agent“:

The traveling public has no idea that the changes the TSA makes come as orders sent down directly from Washington D.C. Those orders may have reasons, but we little screeners at a screening checkpoint will never be told what the background might be. We get told to do something, and just as in the military, we are expected to make it happen—no ifs, ands or buts about it. Perhaps the changes are as a result of some event occurring in the nation or the world, perhaps it’s based on some newly received information or interrogation. What the traveling public needs to understand the necessity for flexibility. If a passenger asks us why we’re doing something, in all likelihood we couldn’t tell them even if we really did know the answer. This is a business of sensitive information that is used to make choices that can have life changing effects if the information is divulged to the wrong person(s). Just trust that we must know something that prompts us to be doing something.

I have no idea why Kip Hawley is surprised that the TSA is as unpopular with Americans as the IRS.

EDITED TO ADD (1/30): The TSA has a blog, and Kip Hawley wrote the first post. This could be interesting….

EDITED TO ADD (1/31): There is some speculation that the “Confessions of a TSA Agent” is a hoax. I don’t know.

EDITED TO ADD (2/4): More on the TSA blog.

Posted on January 29, 2008 at 3:13 PM • View Comments

Passport Fraud

Investigative report on passport fraud worldwide.

Six years after 9/11, an NBC News undercover investigation has found that the black market in fraudulent passports is thriving. On the streets of South America, NBC documented the sale of stolen and doctored passports, and travel papers prized by terrorists: genuine passports issued under false names. For a few thousand dollars, an undercover investigator was able to purchase several entirely new identities from organized criminal networks with access to corrupt government employees. The investigator obtained passports from Spain, Peru, and Venezuela and used the Peruvian and Venezuelan passports to travel widely in the Western Hemisphere, with practically no scrutiny.

Posted on January 8, 2008 at 1:59 PM • View Comments

Airport Behavioral Profiling Leads to an Arrest

I’m generally a fan of behavioral profiling. While it sounds weird and creepy and has been likened to Orwell’s “facecrime”, there’s no doubt that—when done properly—it works at catching common criminals:

On Dec. 4, Juan Carlos Berriel-Castillo, 22, and Bernardo Carmona-Olivares, 20, were planning to fly to Maui but were instead arrested on suspicion of forgery.

They tried to pass through a Terminal 4 security checkpoint with suspicious documents, Phoenix police spokeswoman Stacie Derge said.

The pair had false permanent-resident identification, and authorities also found false Social Security cards, officials say.

While the pair were questioned about the papers, a TSA official who had received behavior-recognition training observed a third man in the area who appeared to be connected to Berriel-Castillo and Carmona-Olivares, Melendez said.

As a result, police later arrested Samuel Gonzalez, 32. A background check revealed that Gonzalez was wanted on two misdemeanor warrants.

TSA press release here.

Security is a trade-off. The question is whether the expense of the Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, given the minor criminals it catches, is worth it. (Remember, it’s supposed to catch terrorists, not people with outstanding misdemeanor warrants.) Especially with the 99% false alarm rate:

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

And the other social costs, including loss of liberty, restriction of fundamental freedoms, and the creation of a thoughtcrime. Is this the sort of power we want to give a police force in a constitutional democracy, or does it feel more like a police-state sort of thing?

This “Bizarro” cartoon sums it up nicely.

Posted on January 3, 2008 at 12:49 PM • View Comments

Driver's License Printer Stolen and Recovered

A specialized printer used to print Missouri driver’s licenses was stolen and recovered.

It’s a funny story, actually. Turns out the thief couldn’t get access to the software needed to run the printer; a lockout on the control computer apparently thwarted him. When he called tech support, they tipped off the Secret Service.

On the one hand, this probably won’t deter a more sophisticated thief. On the other hand, you can make pretty good forgeries with off-the-shelf equipment.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 6:11 AM •

Master Forger Sentenced in the UK

Fascinating:

Magic fingers and an unerring eye gave “Hologram Tam,” one of the best forgers in Europe, the skills to produce counterfeit banknotes so authentic that when he was arrested nearly £700,000 worth were in circulation.

Thomas McAnea, 58, who was jailed for six years and four months yesterday, was the kingpin of a professional operation based in Glasgow that, according to police, had the capacity to produce £2 million worth of fake notes a day ­ enough potentially tom destabilise the British economy. More may remain out there undetected.

[…]

“Some of Hologram Tam’s money is still out there. It’s that good that if I gave you one of his notes, you wouldn’t know it,” a police source said.

The detectives also found templates for other forgeries including passports, driving licences, ID cards, bank statements, utility bills, MoT certificates, postage and saving stamps and TV licences.

Posted on October 12, 2007 at 11:34 AM • View Comments

Another Biometric: Vein Patterns

Interesting:

In fact, vein recognition technology has one fundamental advantage over finger print systems: vein patterns in fingers and palms are biometric characteristics that are not left behind unintentionally in every-day activities. In tests conducted by heise, even extreme close-ups of a palm taken with a digital camera, whose RAW format can be filtered systematically to emphasize the near-infrared range, were unable to deliver a clear reproduction of the line pattern. With the transluminance method used by Hitachi it is practically impossible to read out the pattern unnoticed with today’s technology. Another side effect of near-infrared imaging also has relevance to security: vein patterns of inanimate bodily parts become useless after few minutes, due to the increasing deoxidisation of the tissue.

Even if someone manages to obtain a person’s vein pattern, there is no known method for creating a functioning dummy, as is the case for finger prints, where this can be achieved even with home-made tools, as demonstrated by the german computer magazine c’t. As in the case with vendors of finger print systems, Hitachi and Fujitsu do not disclose information on liveness detection methods used in their products.

Besides the considerably improved forgery protection, the vendors of vein recognition technology claim further advantages. Compared to finger print sensors, vein recognition systems are said to deliver false rejection rates (FRR) two orders below that of finger print systems when operating at a comparable false acceptance rate (FAR). This can be ascribed to the basic structure of vein patterns having a much higher degree of variability than finger prints.

This is all interesting. I don’t know about the details of the technology, but the discussions of false positives, false negatives, and forgeability are the right ones to have. Remember, though, that while biometrics are an effective security technology, they’re not a panacea.

Posted on August 8, 2007 at 7:02 AM • View Comments

More Forged Credentials

I’ve written about forged credentials before, and how hard a problem it is to solve. Here’s another story illustrating the problem:

In an apparent violation of the law, a controverisal aide to ex-Gov. Mitt Romney created phony law enforcement badges that he and other staffers used on the campaign trail to strong-arm reporters, avoid paying tolls and trick security guards into giving them immediate access to campaign venues, sources told the Herald.

When faced with a badge, most people assume it’s legitimate. And even if they wanted to verify the badge, there’s no real way for them to do so.

Posted on July 20, 2007 at 1:37 PM • View Comments

Counterfeiting Is not Terrorism

This is a surreal story of someone who was chained up for hours for trying to spend $2 bills. Clerks at Best Buy thought the bills were counterfeit, and had him arrested.

The most surreal quote of the article is the last sentence:

Commenting on the incident, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey told the Sun: “It’s a sign that we’re all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world.”

What in the world do the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have to do with counterfeiting? How does being “a little nervous in the post-9/11 world” have anything to do with this incident? Counterfeiting is not terrorism; it isn’t even a little bit like terrorism.

EDITED TO ADD (5/30): The story is from 2005.

Posted on May 30, 2007 at 1:03 PM • View Comments

GAO Report on International Passenger Prescreening

From the U.S. GAO: “Aviation Security: Efforts to Strengthen International Prescreening are Under Way, but Planning and Implementations Remain,” May 2007.

What GAO Found

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency responsible for international passenger prescreening, has planned or is taking several actions designed to strengthen the aviation passenger prescreening process. One such effort involves CBP stationing U.S. personnel overseas to evaluate the authenticity of the travel documents of certain high-risk passengers prior to boarding U.S.-bound flights. Under this pilot program, called the Immigration Advisory Program (IAP), CBP officers personally interview some passengers deemed to be high-risk and evaluate the authenticity and completeness of these passengers’ travel documents. IAP officers also provide technical assistance and training to air carrier staff on the identification of improperly documented passengers destined for the United States. The IAP has been tested at several foreign airports and CBP is negotiating with other countries to expand it elsewhere and to make certain IAP sites permanent. Successful implementation of the IAP rests, in part, on CBP clearly defining the goals and objectives of the program through the development of a strategic plan.

A second aviation passenger prescreening effort designed to strengthen the passenger prescreening process is intended to align international passenger prescreening with a similar program (currently under development) for prescreening passengers on domestic flights. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA)—a separate agency within DHS—is developing a domestic passenger prescreening program called Secure Flight. If CBP’s international prescreening program and TSA’s Secure Flight program are not effectively aligned once Secure Flight becomes operational, this could result in separate implementation requirements for air carriers and increased costs for both air carriers and the government. CBP and TSA officials stated that they are taking steps to coordinate their prescreening efforts, but they have not yet made all key policy decisions.

In addition to these efforts to strengthen certain international aviation passenger prescreening procedures, one other issue requires consideration in the context of these efforts. This issue involves DHS providing the traveling public with assurances of privacy protection as required by federal privacy law. Federal privacy law requires agencies to inform the public about how the government uses their personal information. Although CBP officials have stated that they have taken and are continuing to take steps to comply with these requirements, the current prescreening process allows passenger information to be used in multiple prescreening procedures and transferred among various CBP prescreening systems in ways that are not fully explained in CBP’s privacy disclosures. If CBP does not issue all appropriate disclosures, the traveling public will not be fully aware of how their personal information is being used during the passenger prescreening process.

Posted on May 23, 2007 at 7:18 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.