brain dead security

Remember back in August methods for cloning the German biometric passport was discovered? The analyst that did the work called it's security 'brain dead'. Well the British biometric passport follows exactly the same standard, and therefore has equally brain dead security, so it comes as no surprise that methods for cloning the British biometric passport has been discovered.

Currently this just means that people will be able to make perfect copies of passports if they can get hold of them for a few seconds, even if they cannot create a clone with different biometrics. Yet. Not that this really matters, people have enough trouble identifing people from photographs that only a passing resembelance is needed and when other biometrics, such as fingerprints, become involved these are even easier and more reliably fooled than checking the photograph.

The only good thing is that the breaking of these systems will not mean that we are any less secure from terrorism, since they never made them any more secure in the first place. But instead of helping to prevent identity fraud (also one of Labour's commonly used excuses for ID Cards which will have the same brain dead security) they will facilitate it.