RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package 168
Jeremy writes to tell us that using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. "But the key in this first generation of biometric passport is relatively easy to identify/crack. It is not random, but consists of passport number, the passport holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date. The Mail found it relatively easy to identify the holder's date of birth, while the expiry date is 10 years from the issue date, which for a newly-delivered passport would clearly fall within a few days. The passport number consists of a number of predictable elements, including an identifier for the issuing office, so effectively a significant part of the key can be reconstructed from the envelope and its address label."
Ohhh (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ohhh (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Ohhh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ohhh (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the article, the cloning took place while it was IN TRANSIT TO the intended receipient - which means that ANYONE getting a Passport through the mail could have their Passport cloned BEFORE they ever GET it.
Without the package that the Passport is shipped in EVER BEING OPENED!
Try reading for content next time.
So, even if you disable the RFID after you GET it, the thing has been compromised BEFORE you ever get your hands ON it!
RFID = Real Fast Identity Destruction... courtesy of Homeland Security and the rest of the paranoids who don't understand technology up on the Hill who probably think that RFID is "totally tubular, man! Like the internets!"
And I will bet long odds that this post gets me audited - again - too.
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Unrelated but interesting: my wife sent in her renewal at the same time we applied for my daughter's first passport, in Nov. 2006, and the renewal arrived sooner but without an RFID chip, only the new passport had one, although they both should have been manufactured at the same time, so you would think using the same methods and materials.
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That's based on a trip back east a few years ago where the travel agent booked the tickets with my wife's maiden, not married name. She was able to get the tickets by producing various documents, but each time through security, we would be told "No, the two of you step over here, please." Let's just say that it was a good thing that we arrived early.
Does anyone remember Press Your Luck? (Score:5, Interesting)
This article reminds me of that story.
Re:Does anyone remember Press Your Luck? (Score:5, Informative)
More can be found at Snopes [snopes.com] and at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
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Thanks for the tip!
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Six hundred bucks?!?!? (Score:2)
Packaging (Score:3, Insightful)
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This implies, at least to me, that there is no security whatsoever protecting it from being read, closed or open. Are we to believe that this is seriously the best that they could come up with?
Re:Packaging (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are we to believe that this is seriously the best that they could come up with?
Sadly, it probably is.
You see, there's a little problem of the laws of physics. A passive RFID package, AFAIK, typically produces output proportional to the input signal. As a result, to get a hotter output, you just need to provide a hotter input. Up to the limit of the chip, then, you can get around any thickness of shielding simply by increasing both transmitter and receiver gain. I suspect you'll find that it would
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Mmmmmmmmm... vacuum-packed for freshness!!
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I'd be hooked.
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apparently mine was "securely" delivered... but I got home to find it inside on the doormat... the postie had just slipped it
Same old Daily Mail (Score:3, Interesting)
So basically, exactly what goes on now, except for the new false sense of security. Great!
* I knew they'd bring this up
Re:Same old Daily Mail (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it's not just governments concerned about illegal immigration. It's residents, too. Illegal immigration does help keep prices low, but it also helps drive down wages by reducing the value of laborers.
As such, they would be remiss in not mentioning it, as it is of interest to their readership.
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I do know that in the US, there are farms that can not get american laborers at over 10 bucks an hour with benefits.
It's the type of work someone will do day in and day out when setting up a new life.
So, that farmer cuold pay more, but they don't have the funds right now, and how much are we willing to buy a potato for?
Looking at the history of migrant labor, the US was a lot better off when migrant laborers went backa nd forth across the border. It was when i
Re:Same old Daily Mail (Score:5, Insightful)
Having grown up in Santa Cruz, which is in a highly agricultural area, and now living in Kelseyville, which is/was the Pear capital of the world (lots of pears coming out and grapes going in these days though) I'm pretty highly aware of the jobs they do.
What? That sentence doesn't really say anything. There are no farms, for example, that could not get American laborers at 30 bucks an hour. That's over 10 bucks an hour. Maybe we could revisit this point?
I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Lots of people in the US need a new life, too.
Well, that's precisely my point. The farmer needs to charge more in order to pay more. As long as some employers are happy to hire illegals, they can charge less, and that makes them more competitive. So their competitors are forced to do the same thing.
Consequently we have cheap produce... but it's only cheap at the store. The simple fact is that every taxpayer in America is subsidizing that "cheap" food. We're paying for medical care for these immigrants, for example. Their employers work them part-time or they otherwise do not receive benefits. They do not pay taxes, or if they do pay taxes, their income is underreported and they're using someone else's SSN (in fact one used mine one year, but they reported only a few dollars of income so it didn't actually harm me.) There is also a very real issue with Mexican (in particular) gangs, especially in California. This is not a joke, this is not a made-up problem designed to scare people. It's real, and it's here. And it is largely a result of illegal immigration.
Now, look at the alternative to illegal immigration. If people are here legally then they can afford to report labor code abuses, because they don't just get kicked out of the country when they interface with the law. So this tends to have the result that people who are worked full-time actually get their benefits, and they have health insurance. So now they no longer need to depend on the taxpayer for medical care.
Of course, it also has the effect that food appears more expensive on the store shelf, or in the produce aisle, et cetera. But in fact the ACTUAL costs may go down overall! I say "may" because let's face it, I am not an economist, and I have not run the numbers. But I'm also not a complete idiot and I'm capable of understanding simple cause and effect.
What we have created is a system that encourages unemployment. It reduces not only the total number of jobs, but also the number of jobs capable of supporting a family. Wouldn't it be better if food cost a little more, or in some cases even a lot more, and the actual cost were reflected directly at the store shelf?
That's not really true. We only see different problems now. One issue is that we the US have constantly sought to degrade the quality of life south of the border in order to protect our pool of ready and willing labor. NAFTA, for example, was simply another way to fuck over the Mexicans. And now that manufacturing is cheaper in other countries, we just take whatever is valuable (even for scrap) and abandon the factories to sit and rust on the polluted ground we left them on, and move our manufacturing, so that Mexico really gets nothing out of it. But long be
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OK, you started out good but you ended up sounding like an ill-informed maniac. There is no way you can attribute the US or NAFTA as degrading the quality of life in Mexico. Absolutely no fucking way. We give billions of dollars in aid to Mexico. Mexico was one of the first countries to undergo the Green Revolution, with major help from the US. This started Mexico's move from an agricultural economy, and allowed them to become a net exporter of food instead of importing. By moving manufacturing into n
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But don't get me started on the quality of most all products today - it's just crap. For some reason, all the high quality stuff - tools, appliances, etc. come from Germany. Kudos to German manufacturers who have figured out that some
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My dad makes the assertion that at least in cars, the germans believe that good components make a good car, whereas the japanese believe that it's good system design that makes the difference. These days, though, both BMWs and Mercedes are big pieces of shit, and VW actually makes a more reliable car. So obviously things are a-movin' and a-shakin' over there.
The Germans DO seem to make the best tools around, though, st
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And where does that money actually go? The majority of it goes into the pockets of the already-wealthy.
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Sorry for being an asshole in advance, but I don't think you addressed my points. Once again, rants and hyperbole. You provide no evidence either through statistics or historical example of how Mexico is worse off because of the United States. Since the passage of NAFTA (which you attacked) per capita income across Mexico has jumped dramatically. Poverty has decreased. Life expectancy has increased. The number of people employed, especially in northern areas around Monterrey and Tijuana, has also incre
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No according the IRS, fourteen million undocumented aliens did pay income taxes last year. They've been paying taxes since the 90s.
The IRS is/was pragmatic enough to accept, campaign for, and scare undocumented aliens into paying income taxes. Granted, probably many undocumented
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No. The IRS is/was pragmatic enough to scare the farming companies into reporting some of that income so that it can be taxed. That's where the real impetus comes from. "Pay their taxes, or we'll take away your business."
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You seem to be forgetting national dental care, the horrible rise of drug abuse, particularly among the working class and the minorities, the removal of troops from Northern Ireland, the parking situation in Benchley, and preventing Liam Gallagher from leaving Oasis.
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I think I was with you until the last item...
One of the problems with RFID (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is a great technology for information such as Barcode scanning and inventory tracking, its use in biometrics, identification and access controls is less secure. Transmitting significant and irrevocable information in an RFID pulse is irresponsible.
Where a barcode is ubiquitous and the concept of "stealing" it is silly, and even where the ID number of a "proxmity card" employee ID badge is easily revocable, information stored on a passport, such as biometrics, permanent identification numbers and the like are not revocable.
If you have such a passport, it is advisable that you either fry the RFID chip (i am not responsible for the legal issues surrounding it) or you store your passport in a metal safe, where RF cannot pass. There are already bags on the market with an integrated faraday cage, it is not entirely practical to keep your RFID identity perpetually in this bag while traveling (not to mention the headache at the airport screening area with a metal-laced bag). [tgdaily.com]
In short, this new RFID identity system is one of the most ill-advised and potentially dangerous (vulnerable to easy identity theft) systems in recent history, and is simply ASKING for people to duplicate it, while providing no benefit other than the government control ("papers please") that it demands.
Stewed
Re:One of the problems with RFID (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because It's a Dumb Chip! (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary goal is to have a document that's harder (it's never impossible) to forge and easier to collect and process entry/exits. That's it. End of story.
It's not a silver bullet. Treating it as such is demanding something you won't ever get.
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Re:No No! No! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Create a falsified passport jacket capable of holding a chip and antenna.
2. You embed the _right_ chip with the _right_ number encoded (oh yeah, you need to encode the chip) AND the _right_ antenna required for the chip in your garage into the faked passport jacket.
3. Create secure paper used in passport.
4. You'll need to work up all of the print security features.
It's not trivial, it's not a silver bullet it's not a fake ID you used to buy beer in college. Stop expecting more from the new passport than the design requirements fulfill.
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1. Read and crack data without being detected(this is perhaps easier than stealing a traditional passport).
2. Forge now even more legitimate passport using cracked data.
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the rfid chip contains photo biometrics certainly (not a high res picture either, theres only a tiny amount of storage space), but fingerprints arent included yet in many cases (and were never mandated by ICAO) it also doesnt include your signature.
so somebody that looks a bit like you, enough to pass casual observation (we all know computer face
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So the fact that someone can copy your the chip is more of a privacy issue then a security issue.
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So if you "need" a chip to handle the data, what's wrong with using a CONTACT-read chip like those on credit cards?
Sticking the passport in a slot is THAT much more inconvenient than waving it over a reader that you have to make the passport subject to drive-by scanning?
(Just imagine the next generation of "wardrivers". The term might end up being lite
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an optical reader decodes the printed values on the bottom edge of your passport in order to construct the key to connect to and decrypt the rfid data.
Not at all. (Score:2)
Not at all. There's no reason the material the chip is embedded in -and the electrodes are on the surface of - has to have the form factor of a credit card. You can use the the cover of the passport - front or back, outside or inside - just fine.
Passports have had plastic-coated covers for over a decade. There's no reason the plastic layer can't be made thick enough
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You can get almost twice as many bytes into a 1cm x 1cm 2D barcode as you can in an entire typical RFID chip. Use an entire page and you have orders of magnitude more storage.
So why RFID again? The only possibilities I can think of are that either the poliicians are complete idiots, they got a large campaign contribution from an RFID vendor, or they intend to use it to spy on the ciizens. Since one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, my guess is that the politicians
What about US passports? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no "chip:" the electronic storage is embedded in the photo page of the passport, among a series of wires covered with laminate. The Department of State says the cover of the new passports prevents RFID scanning when closed, which probably explains why the cover is a different thickness and flexibility than the previous passports.
Funny thing, though: the passport itself was opened flat in the shipping envelope from the passport center. So, presumably, it could be read. I wonder what sort of security the USDoS is using on these things?
The article has nothing to do with U.S. passports, since the Brits are using a different RFID mechanism. So, no help there. I wonder how many people read the article summary (which fails to mention this detail - it probably should, since this is a rather U.S.-centric website) without RTFA and are busy microwaving their new U.S. passports?
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What are you talking about? Every department of the US government is about denial of service. They deny you service at every step.
But seriously, I'm sure they ship them flat specifically so that they CAN read them. Exactly why they would want to do this is anyone's guess.
I'd say that so long as they don't have the same weak-key problem (or similar) as UK passports, who cares? The issue isn't reading my passport when it's in the mail. The issue is reading my passport when it's on me, and knowing thin
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It was stiff enough that it appeared to have never been closed. I think this is innocuous: there's no way to distinguish passports when they're closed, and they certainly don't want to send them to the wrong person, so this is probably to facilitate sorting. There's certainly no reason for the government to scan them as they travel through the mail; they already know you have a passport, and they're already tracking the p
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That's no "security researcher"... (Score:3, Informative)
RFID passports to be abandonded? (Score:2, Informative)
That said, it looks like some of these passports are out there already. Secondly, I haven't come across a definitive statement or timeline from DHS as to when RFID passpots will be abandonded.
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Right after all the people they really want to track either a) have one or b) have been tagged with RFID through other means. You can make a passive RFID tag the size of a grain of rice (smaller!) now. You could trivially hide it inside of anything... a key chain, or even a key! With the right design, in fact, you could probably use a key as an antenna.
RFID is not going to save the world (Score:5, Informative)
And what I tell everyone is RFID is not the end-all technology to solve every identification need. Also there is no one kind of tag so it is silly to say that RFID in and of itself is insecure.
The truth is that tags can be secure or they can be cheap but very rarely both. It is impossible to be able to have them both with the current economies of scale. The ones used in the passport are most definitely not the high-end tags with memory and cryptographic capabilities. There are some active tags that can do public/private key validation but they also cost a fortune. The governments are going to go with the cheapest version.
They know full well it is going to be cracked. It is not a big deal as it is not that hard to steal or copy the current passport anyways so they have not really digressed. This was meant to be a pilot (that somehow went into production) to check how efficient it could be and also serve as a vehicle for making further enhancements and putting more data.
As other slashdotters have pointed out it is still impossible to actually modify the information on the tags. When this is possible then that is really newsworthy because now people can actually change other people's information and wreak havoc.
But until then there are far easier and cheaper ways to find out someone's Social Security and date of birth on the web.
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The bottom line is that RFID is not any more secure or any less secure than what you currently have. Do you have a credit card? A bank card? Then you are have already been violated.
The RFID used in credit cards and passports are HF (13.56 mhz). The range on these tags is incredibly small. Even with the best equipment you c
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No card in my wallet is remotely readable, at least to the best of my knowledge. You missed the point entirely.
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I think the government has much more information on you anyways than you would think they do with an RFID card. The RFID tag is just another identification marker. It is slightly more secure, more convenient than Barcodes and that is all. Yes it can be read at a range and sometimes you may not know they are being read but the costs and effort to do that is astronomical. Wireless also is easy to track. There are gps, cell phones and a host of other markers as well.
One
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Currently, they don't know my whereabouts at every moment. This would give them orders of magnitude more information about my position than they have now. Currently they can find out where I am only by either actually watching me, which involves following me around; or by reviewing my use of my electronic identities like credit cards and the like, which only works at the moment I use them.
RFID (Score:5, Funny)
If you want something done right... (Score:2)
... you have to do it yourself.
If you want something done really wrong (and very expensive) — have the government to do it.
It boggles the mind, that despite continuous and numerous reports of various government screw-ups, the majority of fellow Slashdotters still seem to favor things like "Municipal WiFi"...
Oh, yeah, "local government" is supposed to be better than federal... But is it really? Not in my experience...
Re:If you want something done right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most agencies are more fiscally responsible then most corporations.
Go the the ligrary and look at all the projects that get done.
remember, with a company all you here is the success, with the government all you hear about is the problems.
90% of all government projects are done on time, 90% of all corporate projects fail.
*and they should
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Could I have the source of these statistics, please? Thank you.
Sorry for the double post (Score:2)
It gives a lot more power to the people then private corp. would do.
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Social Security is a fund management system that beats all major private funds in overhead costs. Yes, that's right, the private sector is less efficient than the government. There are plenty of other examples, but it only takes one to show you to be completely wrong. But thanks for playing into the government-hating FUD.
Anybody surprised by this? (Score:2)
Of all the things I can think of that the government ought
People are still using that ? (Score:2)
we keep readin about RFID tags being breached for this, or for that, that the content can be read if you do this, hacked if you do that.
LOL.
How many holes in your armor do you need before you understand that its not bulletproof ?
Its like those electronic voting machines. As far as my knowledge goes, there is yet to exist a tamper proof machine for safe e-Voting. Why are they still going this way how many millions are they gonna spend before they realize it costs
not a security issue, a privacy issue (Score:2)
This is really only an issue because someone can get your
It's a feature, right? (Score:2)
Vunerability (Score:2)
CVE: None
Date: Mar 07 2007 10:25PM
Credit: Adam Laurie is credited with discovering this issue
Vulnerable: UK Passport >= 2006
Not vulnerable: UK Passport < 2006
Lack of security checking or strong passwords allows an attacker to gain access
to personal details stored on the passport by launching a brute force or
dictionary attack. An attacker would need access to a region of a few
centimeters around the
Re:Embedded Linux is a major security risk (Score:4, Funny)
What number is on your ear tag? OH! are you one of the rare untagged morons? Where is my camera! National Geographic is gonna pay for a photo of a untagged wild moron!
hey, come back! this camera won't steal your soul....... dammit.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
A distinction without a difference. An organisation (and it doesn't matter if this is a terrorist group or a run-of-the-mill little mafia type operation) coöpts a few postal employees. Not particularly hard to do. Those employees use a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment to scan the passports that pass through their hands. This is nearly instantaneous, and non-invasive, so good luck noticing that. The passports go right along to their intended recipients with no delay, and no one's the wiser. Yet the organisation now has all the information needed to create forged passports with valid data, which will raise no flags when used and allow their operatives to assume the identity of the citizen. All the supposed security benefits of the plan are gone, in fact, it's worse than old-style passports from a standpoint of security.
Depends on how good your receiver is. Just because customs will be using an el cheapo setup that needs to be within ten inches to read the signal doesn't mean that no one will be able to construct a better reader. You think that's a *minor* issue? That someone could steal your identity, or detonate a bomb, based on that information without even having to set hands on your passport? Sounds pretty major to me.
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Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
A copy of 'biometric' passport information has no value in a security context. If a copy of a passport is created using the biometric information then, obviously, that biometric information will not match the passport holder which will mean he/she will be identified as carrying a forged passport. If the biometrics are changed the digest of the passport information will be invalid and so, again, he/she will be identified as carrying a forged passport.
This is really only an issue because someone can get your personal information (for use in, for example, financial identity fraud) without having to actually open any of your mail.
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The EU versions (excluding the UK) carry your fingerprints. The US version has space for additional biometrics so you'll see either fingerprints or retinal scans on those as well in the near future as
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Not true.
There's a lot to be said for not bothering to forge passports anyway - sooner or later customs at most first-world countries will probably link up, so the passport number can be checked instantly against a database to make sure the details match up. The only way a "forged" passport will work then is if it's not forged at all, but rather made with the collusion of someone at the passport
I'm a "Law 'n Order Anarchist" (Score:3, Interesting)
I, on the other hand, characterize myself as a "Law 'n Order Anarchist" (or "Law 'n Order Minarchist" on even-numbered days). That means I think we should get rid of all (or all but the minimum necessary) of the laws - but believe it must be done in the right ORDER or it makes things worse rather than better.
(Actually, I'm more of a "Constitutio
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If there are no borders, then there is effectively no government. This is one of my big problems with the Libertarians. Taking away borders would, in theory, lead to anarchy. In practice, any anarchy gives rise to power centers since nature abhors a power vacuum just as much as it abhors a physical vacuum. In the past, this vacuum was filled by feudal systems that coalesced into nation states. In the present, the porosity of borders combined with the mobility and rapid communications of technological s
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Likewise, there are ideologies that sound attractive in most or all political parties, just not 100% of a particular party.
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You call yourself a libertarian and you can't see the internal inconsistency in that position?
Sigh, what happened to the good old days when libertarians were people who had read and understood Ayn Rand? Our borders are our gated community, how else keep out people who are opposed to the libertarian ethic? (I.e., who want to take things from us
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That's the great thing about libertarianism. My liberty becomes your chains. Public education (a non-libertarian item) saves me money by helping give children an education and direction, thus preventing even larger costs in prisons (something libertarians believe in). Thus, by logic, I can claim that, since public education reduces the overall size of the government, free public education is a libertarian goal
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Too many self-styled libertarians seem to think that the term implies no government at all -- and then fawn worshipfully at the foot of corporations who decry "government interference". The fact is, without government, there would be no
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Secure borders are against military threats, not people you don't like. A fence will stop no military force. A fence is for closed borders. Isolationism can come with libertarianism, conservatism, or liberalism. Closed borders are about isolation, not security.
And this is what I mean by not undestanding Ayn Rand.
And what if someone understands and disagrees, but still
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I don't know what your politics are, but you certainly argue like a left-winger.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the left wing is out t
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Psssttt (Score:2)
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