6 ms·

How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity (Bruce Schneier)

76 points by bdfh42 18y ago

jrockway 18y ago
I don't really see the point of identity. Why do I need a social security number to have a driver's license? Why don't they just photograph the person who shows up and passes the test? Why does my name need to be on my passport? (What difference does it make? If I am a threat to the free world, why am I not in prison?)
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Without some form of identity, you can claim that the other guy who blew up the airplane wasn't you. Likewise, what's to keep the state from bringing you to trial for the same crime N times? Without identity, how does Habeas Corpus work? In fact, how does most of the legal system work? Your proposal is that the photograph constitute identity. This isn't valid anymore. It wasn't even valid in the pre Photoshop days.
- shawndrost 18y ago
  If a license photo or an ideal passport uniquely identifies the bearer, you're not really proposing any change. If it doesn't, what does a license/passport mean? Someone, somewhere, filled out a form?
  - jrockway 18y ago
    Isn't that what it means now?
- mdasen 18y ago
  Work credentials. If I know of graduates of a prestigious institution and can get a license in their name, I could easily get jobs I didn't earn and cause companies to loose money by paying me for a position I'm not qualified for. Delinquency history. People screw up. I'm a big fan of forgiveness. At the same time, the state has an interest in knowing whether this is the first time you've been convicted of a crime of the 20th. Self-protection. Yes, identity (can) protect you from the state as much as it protects the state from you. Without identity, the government could (conceivably) steal you away in the night. With identity, that becomes harder as your relatives have documents proving your existence. Those are just a few cases. To address your issues: your name must be on your passport because while your home country may perceive you as no threat, another country might perceive you as a risk. Usually that's simply an issue of politics, but let's say that it's 2008 and you're an upstanding citizen so you just grab yourself a shiny new passport; 2009 comes and you rob a dozen banks; it's in the state's interest to be able to differentiate between your passport and the passports of others at all times and not simply make the ok/not ok determination at issuance. With driver's licenses, an SSN requirement prevents someone who lost their license due to several counts of drunk driving from simply applying for a new one under a new name - drunk drivers can pass the exam, but they still aren't people I'd like on the road. For better or worse, we're becoming a dossier society. On the better side, people who shouldn't be able to escape their past have a harder time (drunk drivers can't just go to the RMV and pass a test). On the worse side, people can't escape their past even when it's not that important - and I would say that a lot of people create a lot of anxiety over the fact that they have such a dossier following them around.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    How about interviews? It should help with work stuff. References are good, too.
    - mdasen 18y ago
      Well, references gets back to the issue of identity. If I can forge identity, I can apply as someone else and use their references. Then when checking references do HR people have to say, "was she a brunette, medium build with thick framed glasses?" And that's not great at proving the validity of that reference. Interviews can help, but it's only partial. Let's pretend to work in HR. We have a position open for a senior programmer with a generous salary. We get 100 applicants. Well, we could interview all 100 of them, but that would certainly take a long time. If we don't have credentials that we trust on any of them, the interview must be quite extensive. Microsoft's interviews last an entire day. So, in order to hire someone from this group, it takes 100 days of work (whether that's 1 person working for 100 days or 10 people working for 10 days, it's a lot of work). And that's basically just lost productivity. With salaries of $50,000/yr, we've spent roughly $20,000 to hire one person. Now, let's say that we require a BS in Computer Science and we trust identity in out society (no impersonations). Maybe we can weed out many of them who are simply kiddies using Joomla. Beyond that, we could even discriminate by institution. MIT to the top of the pile please! And so on. . . Identity allows us to trust the information we receive from other sources. When your buddy vouches that you're fun to one of his friends, that friend knows your buddy and accepts that premise. They don't need to test you - they've accepted the credential that your mutual friend has provided. Likewise, a degree from MIT in Computer Science vouches for you as a major league nerd. While an HR department should still challenge you in an interview, it can allow them to weed out those who have no one to vouch for them and allows for somewhat more relaxed testing. Heck, I get most of my work based off my portfolio. If others can claim to be me, they are able to use the sites I've built as vouching for them. In the long run, people who are forging are found out. Eventually, that person with the bogus CS degree doesn't know what they should know and they're out. But in the short run, there's a ton of waste. They're drawing a salary as they work slower and produce crappier code. If we are trying to be efficient, we want to eliminate that waste.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  If I am a threat to the free world, why am I not in prison? Oh, man, we've got enough indefinite imprisonment without charges going on as it is. Please don't encourage it. Once upon a time, people's "data shadows" were very thin indeed. In The Fatal Shore, a truly awesome history book about Australia, they talked about policing in Georgian England. The identification of criminals relied primarily on verbal descriptions of their looks: Official crime records and registers of criminals were primitive, and there would be no fingerprinting until 1885. Artists made sketches, for popular consumption, of famous offenders... but one could no more recognize a felon from such semi-devotional effigies than pick St. Paul from a crowd by consulting a Byzantine icon. Identification of wanted men had to be made from verbal descriptions in the police gazettes, circulated to mayors and magistrates after the early 1770s... Sketchy as they were, such descriptions did produce some arrests, mainly in villages where people noticed strangers. Some officers of the law had long memories. Henry Fielding's sightless half-brother John, a magistrate known in Bow Street as the "Blind Beak," was said to be able to identify 3000 different malefactors by their voices alone. But on the whole, it was easier for criminals to escape scot-free in the 1780s than it would ever be again. This meant that, once you had caught a suspected criminal, there was no way to release them temporarily without them disappearing, quite possibly forever. So a lot of crimes were punishable by fines (which could be collected on the spot), or by immediate imprisonment (which is what you got if you couldn't pay the fine), or by death. You couldn't really put people on probation, or parole, or release them on bail. The result, in practice, was that every person who stole a loaf of bread risked indefinite imprisonment or even death. It was so inhumane (and so expensive -- there weren't enough jails) that the English legal system leapt at the opportunity to solve the problem in a novel way: Transport criminals to the colonies, where they would never bother homelanders again even when they were freed. Until 1776 the favorite colonial destination was the American colonies, but after that the English had to invent the Australian penal colonies...
  - anamax 18y ago
    > Some officers of the law had long memories. Henry Fielding's sightless half-brother John, a magistrate known in Bow Street as the "Blind Beak," was said to be able to identify 3000 different malefactors by their voices alone. How did they know that he was correctly identifying them?
ph0rque 18y ago
Hmmm, if one could write programs to manage these data shadows, then this would be a perfect startup opportunity...
- jonknee 18y ago
  Except that it would be illegal. There are a lot more profitable illegal "startups" out there.
dangoldin 18y ago
Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption. If he can create a whole new identity for himself from prison using mail I don't see why we can't using our freedom.
maxklein 18y ago
How do you fake your photograph though? All these fake identity scams fall through as soon as you have to show a photograph of yourself. And considering how good software is getting at recongizing faces, soon it will be near to impossible.
- aneesh 18y ago
  > "All these fake identity scams fall through as soon as you have to show a photograph of yourself." Because no one's ever used a fake photo ID to, say, get into a bar.
  - staunch 18y ago
    How many people would get into the bar if US Customs was running the door? Certainly some would, but probably 98% less. Most of the time the reason fake IDs work is because bouncers just don't care. As long as you give them plausible deniability they're happy enough to let you pay them money.
- DougBTX 18y ago
  How do you fake your photograph though? RTFA, you just don't get any photo ID for the identity until you sell that identity to someone - who you then take a photo of.
sammyo 18y ago
Me and my shadow Strolling down the avenue Me and my shadow Not a soul to tell our troubles too And when it's twelve o'clock We climb the stair We never knock For nobody's there
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  I suppose there aren't any Frank or Sammy fans on this board. Nice try though.
boredguy8 18y ago
"twenty-five years is too distant a payoff horizon" And -this- mentality is what's disastrous to security planning. I hope people actually inside NatSec / InfoSec take a long-term view of things.
- ivey 18y ago
  I trust Schneier's take on this type of calculation more than I trust the people inside NatSec/InfoSec.
dkokelley 18y ago
Why not just link link our identities to DNA, thumb prints, and other unique features of us? You want to withdraw money? Scan your eye here. You would like to apply for a driver's license? Spit into this jar. Someone will contact you in a week (or however long it takes to process DNA samples). That way, the shadow can never really be separated from the person (or at least the difficulty increases). BTW, I recommend watching the movie Gattaca for an interesting take on identity theft of the future, when people are engineered and DNA is checked everywhere you go.
- blurry 18y ago
  If someone wants to rob me, I'd rather they take my id than my thumb...
  - ryanmahoski 18y ago
    If someone wants to rob you, they too prefer your id to your thumb. The average sentence for aggravated assault in the U.S. is 30 to 90 years per count. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#Aggravated_assault http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#Aggravated_assault
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  Why not just link link our identities to DNA, thumb prints, and other unique features of us? Because the thing is that modern western society doesn't want a system of identity to be perfect, we just want it to be good enough. The reason for this is quite simply a history lesson. Every single time the controllers of identity are able to do it really well, the rest of us get royally screwed.
  - derefr 18y ago
    Well, we just need to decentralize identity, then. Basically, PGP signing of our more "regular" identification mechanisms using our DNA and a password as the biometric key for the private keyring--other people won't know who you are unless, and until, you want them to.

76 points by bdfh42 18y ago

I don't really see the point of identity. Why do I need a social security number to have a driver's license? Why don't they just photograph the person who shows up and passes the test? Why does my name need to be on my passport? (What difference does it make? If I am a threat to the free world, why am I not in prison?)

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
stcredzero 18y ago
Without some form of identity, you can claim that the other guy who blew up the airplane wasn't you. Likewise, what's to keep the state from bringing you to trial for the same crime N times? Without identity, how does Habeas Corpus work? In fact, how does most of the legal system work? Your proposal is that the photograph constitute identity. This isn't valid anymore. It wasn't even valid in the pre Photoshop days.
shawndrost 18y ago
If a license photo or an ideal passport uniquely identifies the bearer, you're not really proposing any change. If it doesn't, what does a license/passport mean? Someone, somewhere, filled out a form?
- jrockway 18y ago
  Isn't that what it means now?
mdasen 18y ago
Work credentials. If I know of graduates of a prestigious institution and can get a license in their name, I could easily get jobs I didn't earn and cause companies to loose money by paying me for a position I'm not qualified for. Delinquency history. People screw up. I'm a big fan of forgiveness. At the same time, the state has an interest in knowing whether this is the first time you've been convicted of a crime of the 20th. Self-protection. Yes, identity (can) protect you from the state as much as it protects the state from you. Without identity, the government could (conceivably) steal you away in the night. With identity, that becomes harder as your relatives have documents proving your existence. Those are just a few cases. To address your issues: your name must be on your passport because while your home country may perceive you as no threat, another country might perceive you as a risk. Usually that's simply an issue of politics, but let's say that it's 2008 and you're an upstanding citizen so you just grab yourself a shiny new passport; 2009 comes and you rob a dozen banks; it's in the state's interest to be able to differentiate between your passport and the passports of others at all times and not simply make the ok/not ok determination at issuance. With driver's licenses, an SSN requirement prevents someone who lost their license due to several counts of drunk driving from simply applying for a new one under a new name - drunk drivers can pass the exam, but they still aren't people I'd like on the road. For better or worse, we're becoming a dossier society. On the better side, people who shouldn't be able to escape their past have a harder time (drunk drivers can't just go to the RMV and pass a test). On the worse side, people can't escape their past even when it's not that important - and I would say that a lot of people create a lot of anxiety over the fact that they have such a dossier following them around.
- DenisM 18y ago
  How about interviews? It should help with work stuff. References are good, too.
  - mdasen 18y ago
    Well, references gets back to the issue of identity. If I can forge identity, I can apply as someone else and use their references. Then when checking references do HR people have to say, "was she a brunette, medium build with thick framed glasses?" And that's not great at proving the validity of that reference. Interviews can help, but it's only partial. Let's pretend to work in HR. We have a position open for a senior programmer with a generous salary. We get 100 applicants. Well, we could interview all 100 of them, but that would certainly take a long time. If we don't have credentials that we trust on any of them, the interview must be quite extensive. Microsoft's interviews last an entire day. So, in order to hire someone from this group, it takes 100 days of work (whether that's 1 person working for 100 days or 10 people working for 10 days, it's a lot of work). And that's basically just lost productivity. With salaries of $50,000/yr, we've spent roughly $20,000 to hire one person. Now, let's say that we require a BS in Computer Science and we trust identity in out society (no impersonations). Maybe we can weed out many of them who are simply kiddies using Joomla. Beyond that, we could even discriminate by institution. MIT to the top of the pile please! And so on. . . Identity allows us to trust the information we receive from other sources. When your buddy vouches that you're fun to one of his friends, that friend knows your buddy and accepts that premise. They don't need to test you - they've accepted the credential that your mutual friend has provided. Likewise, a degree from MIT in Computer Science vouches for you as a major league nerd. While an HR department should still challenge you in an interview, it can allow them to weed out those who have no one to vouch for them and allows for somewhat more relaxed testing. Heck, I get most of my work based off my portfolio. If others can claim to be me, they are able to use the sites I've built as vouching for them. In the long run, people who are forging are found out. Eventually, that person with the bogus CS degree doesn't know what they should know and they're out. But in the short run, there's a ton of waste. They're drawing a salary as they work slower and produce crappier code. If we are trying to be efficient, we want to eliminate that waste.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
If I am a threat to the free world, why am I not in prison? Oh, man, we've got enough indefinite imprisonment without charges going on as it is. Please don't encourage it. Once upon a time, people's "data shadows" were very thin indeed. In The Fatal Shore, a truly awesome history book about Australia, they talked about policing in Georgian England. The identification of criminals relied primarily on verbal descriptions of their looks: Official crime records and registers of criminals were primitive, and there would be no fingerprinting until 1885. Artists made sketches, for popular consumption, of famous offenders... but one could no more recognize a felon from such semi-devotional effigies than pick St. Paul from a crowd by consulting a Byzantine icon. Identification of wanted men had to be made from verbal descriptions in the police gazettes, circulated to mayors and magistrates after the early 1770s... Sketchy as they were, such descriptions did produce some arrests, mainly in villages where people noticed strangers. Some officers of the law had long memories. Henry Fielding's sightless half-brother John, a magistrate known in Bow Street as the "Blind Beak," was said to be able to identify 3000 different malefactors by their voices alone. But on the whole, it was easier for criminals to escape scot-free in the 1780s than it would ever be again. This meant that, once you had caught a suspected criminal, there was no way to release them temporarily without them disappearing, quite possibly forever. So a lot of crimes were punishable by fines (which could be collected on the spot), or by immediate imprisonment (which is what you got if you couldn't pay the fine), or by death. You couldn't really put people on probation, or parole, or release them on bail. The result, in practice, was that every person who stole a loaf of bread risked indefinite imprisonment or even death. It was so inhumane (and so expensive -- there weren't enough jails) that the English legal system leapt at the opportunity to solve the problem in a novel way: Transport criminals to the colonies, where they would never bother homelanders again even when they were freed. Until 1776 the favorite colonial destination was the American colonies, but after that the English had to invent the Australian penal colonies...
- anamax 18y ago
  > Some officers of the law had long memories. Henry Fielding's sightless half-brother John, a magistrate known in Bow Street as the "Blind Beak," was said to be able to identify 3000 different malefactors by their voices alone. How did they know that he was correctly identifying them?

ph0rque 18y ago

Hmmm, if one could write programs to manage these data shadows, then this would be a perfect startup opportunity...

jonknee 18y ago
Except that it would be illegal. There are a lot more profitable illegal "startups" out there.

dangoldin 18y ago

Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption. If he can create a whole new identity for himself from prison using mail I don't see why we can't using our freedom.

maxklein 18y ago

How do you fake your photograph though? All these fake identity scams fall through as soon as you have to show a photograph of yourself. And considering how good software is getting at recongizing faces, soon it will be near to impossible.

aneesh 18y ago
> "All these fake identity scams fall through as soon as you have to show a photograph of yourself." Because no one's ever used a fake photo ID to, say, get into a bar.
- staunch 18y ago
  How many people would get into the bar if US Customs was running the door? Certainly some would, but probably 98% less. Most of the time the reason fake IDs work is because bouncers just don't care. As long as you give them plausible deniability they're happy enough to let you pay them money.
DougBTX 18y ago
How do you fake your photograph though? RTFA, you just don't get any photo ID for the identity until you sell that identity to someone - who you then take a photo of.

sammyo 18y ago

Me and my shadow Strolling down the avenue Me and my shadow Not a soul to tell our troubles too And when it's twelve o'clock We climb the stair We never knock For nobody's there

run4yourlives 18y ago
I suppose there aren't any Frank or Sammy fans on this board. Nice try though.

boredguy8 18y ago

"twenty-five years is too distant a payoff horizon" And -this- mentality is what's disastrous to security planning. I hope people actually inside NatSec / InfoSec take a long-term view of things.

ivey 18y ago
I trust Schneier's take on this type of calculation more than I trust the people inside NatSec/InfoSec.

dkokelley 18y ago

Why not just link link our identities to DNA, thumb prints, and other unique features of us? You want to withdraw money? Scan your eye here. You would like to apply for a driver's license? Spit into this jar. Someone will contact you in a week (or however long it takes to process DNA samples). That way, the shadow can never really be separated from the person (or at least the difficulty increases). BTW, I recommend watching the movie Gattaca for an interesting take on identity theft of the future, when people are engineered and DNA is checked everywhere you go.

blurry 18y ago
If someone wants to rob me, I'd rather they take my id than my thumb...
- ryanmahoski 18y ago
  If someone wants to rob you, they too prefer your id to your thumb. The average sentence for aggravated assault in the U.S. is 30 to 90 years per count. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#Aggravated_assault http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#Aggravated_assault
run4yourlives 18y ago
Why not just link link our identities to DNA, thumb prints, and other unique features of us? Because the thing is that modern western society doesn't want a system of identity to be perfect, we just want it to be good enough. The reason for this is quite simply a history lesson. Every single time the controllers of identity are able to do it really well, the rest of us get royally screwed.
- derefr 18y ago
  Well, we just need to decentralize identity, then. Basically, PGP signing of our more "regular" identification mechanisms using our DNA and a password as the biometric key for the private keyring--other people won't know who you are unless, and until, you want them to.