Ian Stirling said:
Can credit cards with embedded smarts be used as secure identification
devices?
Yes, "smart card" technology can certainly be used for that. But if
you
try ebuying the technology and xperimenting with it, be prepared for
nasty huge lawsuits from DirecTV. The fact that you're in the UK may
help a bit, but maybe not. Cribbed from
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31793.html
In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000
federal
lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But
some
of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks
are
getting caught in the crackdown, writes Kevin Poulsen of
SecurityFocus.
In 2000, Texas-based physician Rod Sosa says he had the
entrepreneurial
notion that medical offices might pay a premium for a secure
workstation
-- one better suited for housing sensitive patient information than
an
off-the- shelf PC. A long time computer geek and tinkerer -- as well
as a
medical doctor and internist -- Sosa began working on a prototype. "I
wanted to do this as a means of making extra money outside of my own
practice," he says.
Sosa quickly became enamored of the idea of using smart cards to
provide
access control at the keyboard; the PC would have an attached reader,
and
physicians, medical assistants and office staff would all carry their
own
cards that would unlock the system. So the doctor ordered an
inexpensive
smart card programmer from the Web, and began experimenting. "It
turned
out to be much more difficult than I anticipated," Sosa recalls. He
lost
interest in the plan, and the $79 programmer was relegated to Sosa's
electronics junk box with the old RS- 232 cables and 5 1/4 inch
floppy
drives.
It sat there forgotten for nearly two years, until October, 2002,
when
Sosa received a letter from satellite TV giant DirecTV. The company
accused him of purchasing piracy equipment, and, by extension,
stealing
DirecTV's signal. When he called the company to clear things up, he
found
they weren't interested in his explanations: they wanted $3,500 and
the
smart card programmer, or they would literally make a federal case
out of
it and sue him under anti-piracy laws. "I didn't know what to do, I
was
completely flabbergasted. So I sent the money in," says Sosa. "I have
a
livelihood, and I have a family, and there are a lot of things that
I`d
rather be than right."
And with that, Sosa was swept into and back out of DirecTV's vast
anti-piracy machine -- perhaps the most massive corporate law
enforcement effort since AT&T took on the blue box in the early
1970s.
Tim.
