Identity theft issues?

BoingBoing reports that, as part of Bush's Real ID Act, by 2006 passports will include RFID chips, and by 2008 driver's licenses will have them.

RFID is "tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans.""

Link to original post.

War journalism

Senator Calls for Inquiry Into Journalists' Access

The senator, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said his request was prompted by an assertion by Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify a confidential source, that she had "security clearance" during her assignment with a military unit in Iraq in 2003.

...

In an interview last week, Ms. Miller said that in her account in The Times of her role in the C.I.A. leak case, she imprecisely described the rules covering her assignment in Iraq. Ms. Miller said that she did what dozens of other journalists covering the war did: sign a written agreement called a "nondisclosure form" that allows reporters to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record.

...

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the procedure was a practical way to permit reporters to travel with military units and be exposed to sensitive information, and not compromise the operation.


Link (nytimes.com with compulsory registration; use bugmenot.com to bypass).