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A man entering the U.S. from Canada was able to cross the border without his passport by presenting a scan of it on his iPad. And no one even bothered to yell “Photoshop!”
Martin Reisch said Tuesday a slightly annoyed U.S. border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad. Reisch was a half hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport.
He told the officer he was heading to the U.S. to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend’s kids. He said that true story, the scanned passport and his driver’s license helped him get through last week.
He said the officer seemed mildly annoyed when he handed him the iPad.
“I thought I’d at least give it a try,” Reisch said. “He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas.”
Reisch was able to re-enter Canada on his way home using the same method. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
Update: U.S. Customs denies it happened. Link
As a joke, forgers at the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive made this fake German passport in 1941. It lists Hitler as a Jewish painter who has permission to visit Palestine, then ruled by the British. You can view another photograph of this passport from the UK’s National Archives at the link.
Link -via How to Be a Retronaut
… by someone driving by in a car, if those documents have RFID chips installed in them.
A fellow in San Francisco installed an RFID reader in his car, with an antenna, and connected it to his laptop on the front seat. He then drove around the city and was able to pick up the signals from passports and driver’s licenses and have the information downloaded to his computer. He could then upload the data to clone the passport.
The person doing this is one of the "good guys." He’s demonstrating for the world how insanely easy it is to steal information from an RFID chip, and he’s hoping to convince the public (or, more precisely, lawmakers) that RFID should not be used for personal identity tracking as the Department of Homeland Security wants to do.
There is a video at the Engadget link.
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