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Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

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Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#71

Post by acdha »

disabled wrote: post #69
acdha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the quality of that Indian team like, though? You’re adding multiple layers of overhead before anything gets to the actual workers and in my experience once you got under, say, 70% of U.S. rates the quality plummeted because people capable of doing solid technical work are also capable of researching rates and jumping to a better job.

It can be very high if there is excellent continuity of communication (for asynchronous work matters), the right tools are being used (for asynchronous work), and the workers have the right qualifications and experience.

Oh, definitely: I just haven’t found it to be anywhere near as cheap as the money guys tell people – you can certainly save some money, possibly even enough to make up for the communication delays, but I’ve never heard of it being anywhere near the wild claims, and sometimes it’s even a net loss.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#72

Post by cm2187 »

danpalmer wrote: post #12
danpalmer wrote: post #10

> IBM Canada has won $1.5M contract to develop new platform for IRCC This will buy what? A team of 4 interns and new grads for 6 months. At the end they'll have a slide deck with too much wordart in ith containing some half-baked ideas, and a few lines of code that don't do anything useful at all and are further from production readiness than starting from scratch.

I wish I was being facetious, but I really don't think I am. IBM hired extensively from my university, I know people who worked there or adjacent to IBM in industry. They hired the bottom of the cohort (computer science/software engineering) at university and didn't hire anyone who could code. They emphasised communication over technical ability (fine, ok), but their style of communication is business buzzwords in sl…

In defense of IBM you don't need to be a researcher in quantum computing to build a CRUD app.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#73

Post by cm2187 »

yabones wrote: post #38

As a Canadian, I will provide some context around our application for passport process. I went through it a year ago (got my passport 2 days before lockdown), so it's still fresh in my head. To get a passport, you have to go to the post office, get the paper forms (and a spare or two in case you mess up), and fill them out. They need info about where you were born, the doctor who delivered you, your current address a…

In the UK, there are many photo booths, which also give you a reference number along the prints, which you can provide to the home office as part of the passport application so they get the digital copy from the photo booth company.

Though I am sure there must be hundreds of photo booth apps already.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#74

Post by vincnetas »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #31
vincnetas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so convenient that you could even download similar databases from internet :) Database of passports and TIN of Ukraine (7 500 000 rows) https://raidforums.com/Thread-SELLING-Ukraine-Passports-INN-...

wait what? i can't believe what I'm seeing ... where's the catch?

You can find much more dumps there of all kinds. I know about this site, because recently DB from main car sharing company in Lithuania was published here, and it was big news in LT. But this is public forum accessible without registration. You can imagine what's available behind closed doors.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#76

Post by cm2187 »

Faaak wrote: post #2

In the UK, you can renew your passport online too. I don't really see the risks: they check that your picture matches the old one and you still have to send your old passport for them to issue you the new one..

The part that I find extraordinary is the authentication process for the first UK passport (like after acquiring a citizenship). They don't have an old photo to compare to, they won't look at a foreign ID either. So the authentication process consists in asking me a series of personal questions (that I know they don't know the answer to because I never gave it to them at any point in the process) and look at me in the eye to assess whether I am truthful.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#77

Post by andi999 »

stagas wrote: post #66
andi999 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well everybody probably agrees it will be messy, and not everyone thinks the equilibrium will be good, so the incentives to try this are low.

If the argument is "everybody thinks that" then that's the form of learned helplessness I talked about, which is why I asked here, to hear some pragmatic reasons. The only argument I hear being repeated is the same vague "otherwise it would be bad" from one side and the "borders are imaginary" from the other side. To me it seems we just keep them because it's been this way since the Roman empire and noone knows reall…

On the world scale Poland and Germany are in the same economic tier.

The part that it will be messy, was actually what yourself said (so I didn't think you need evidence for that).

Well, one can also look at other models historically, if you think of a border as demarcation of the influence of a state. Historically China didn't have well defined border, the further away civilisations were vassal states which had to pay tribute (but received gift of higher value than the tribute, so the real tribute was acknowledgement of power).

Another example would be afghanistan/Pakistan. The border is very transparent and at least in Afghanistan there is not a functioning government, but war lord tribal areas.

But this is about border of state demarcation. The idea of people moving to other places is generally a new one (apart from earliest pre history or when masses do this, like in the migration period) new in the sense starting with colonization of the US.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#78

Post by Dirlewanger »

danpalmer wrote: post #10

> IBM Canada has won $1.5M contract to develop new platform for IRCC This will buy what? A team of 4 interns and new grads for 6 months. At the end they'll have a slide deck with too much wordart in ith containing some half-baked ideas, and a few lines of code that don't do anything useful at all and are further from production readiness than starting from scratch.

Yup. I'm in disbelief after seeing that number. Digital government IDs of any kind are something that no government on Earth can securely provide. We're all too immature and stunted with software design still.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#79

Post by kergonath »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we will never have something similar in the EU. That kind of system is asking for abuse. Please no, let's keep the passports, driver licenses and birth certificates on old fashioned reasonably hard to forge paper with holograms and securely printed (and perforated, check your EU passport hard page against the light).

>hard to forge paper Except that history has proven the plenty of crime organizations can fake those really well and pass undetected and maybe you missed it, but the authenticity of your passport or any ID document is proven and validated by the secure cryptographic element in the chip within it, not the fancy features in the plastic/paper of the document, that's why chipped passports are now the norm. Fancy physical…

> Except that history has proven the plenty of crime organizations can fake those really well and pass undetected and maybe you missed it, but the authenticity of your passport or any ID document is proven and validated by the secure cryptographic element in the chip within it, not the fancy features in the plastic/paper of the document, that's why chipped passports are now the norm.

In any case, the forging scales much worse than just getting your hands on a database when you have to forge a physics document with decent security features. It’ll never be 100% secure, but then neither will be a virtual passport.

> Fancy physical documents without security chips are inherently less secure, not more.

All new and future identification documents will have a chip anyway. The baseline is not just a piece of paper.

You start from the premise that a physical document is trivial to forge, therefore it is not an improvement over a purely numerical one. But that’s circular logic. In reality, it is more difficult to steal, copy and re-sell a physical passport than a cryptographic key.

Re: Virtual passport app presents real data risk, experts warn

#80

Post by mdpopescu »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #62
gbear605 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why the only solution is to not digitize.

Except that most governments have migrated to digitalization of many services. Do you do your tax return in your browser or would you prefer to file endless paper forms and go in person and wait in lines?

As a general rule, I found that when institutions make it more easier for you to give them money, they don't do it for your benefit :)
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