Technology Blog

The European Health Insurance Card is dead handy,
providing access to healthcare for EU residents while travelling in Europe –
it’s definitely worth having one.

There were a few
reports in the
Irish newspapers last week of an announcement by the Health Service Executive,
warning of “a bogus website” which charges a fee of EUR22 to process
applications for this:

The HSE also warned that the site is asking applicants to submit detailed financial information. “It has come to the attention of the Health Service Executive that Irish residents are being targeted by a website which is unnecessarily charging people to apply for EHIC cards. The bogus site concerned — http://www.ehic-card.eu/ — is not connected to the HSE,” said the HSE in a statement.

I’d link to the HSE’s press release on the topic, but it’s down,
apparently — and that’s pretty indicative of the
problem. You see, I’ve been trying to apply for one of these recently.

The HSE has been announcing that there’s no need to use this “bogus site”,
since we can just use the “real” site at http://www.ehic.ie/ to apply for one.
Here’s what they neglect to mention:

• (a) that unless you’re a pensioner you can’t apply for one online — you
  have to print out a form, fill it in, and post it to your local health
  office.
• (b) there’s no indication on the site as to what exactly your “Local Health
  Office” may be, just a long list of mysterious locations.
• (c) in order to apply, the form demands that you supply all that ‘detailed
  financial information’ — namely your name, address, date of birth, proof
  of residency, and PPS number — anyway.
• (d) the “bogus site” isn’t really all that bogus after all.

If they had a simple and usable online application process, perhaps they
wouldn’t be plagued by other sites attempting to offer that service for what is
really a quite reasonable EUR22 fee?

This is a pretty frequent phenomenon on Irish
governmental websites; a half-assed attempt to bring
governmental services online, resulting in shiny informational sites, full
of clip-art of smiling people talking on the phone, which all come down to a
bottom line of “print this out and post it in” or “call this number” –
business as usual. Having said that, at least I can generally still get a human on the phone, which still
beats dealing with US government agencies, I guess!

BTW, I notice the HSE claim that it only takes 10 working days for an EHIC to arrive using their system. I applied for mine 3 weeks ago, and there’s been no word yet…

Tags:ehic eu government health hse internet ireland

This post was written by Justin, source: The EHIC and Irish government websites

This is what passports containing RFID chips will look like:

Note the little rectangular logo at the bottom. According to Ed
Hasbrouck, that’s the
ICAO standard logo indicating that this is an RFID passport, and
therefore:

identity thieves, terrorists, direct marketers, data aggregators,
malicious governments, or anyone else with a radio receiver within 10
meters (30+ feet) or more whenever your passport is read at a border
crossing, airport, etc. can secretly and remotely track you, log your
movements through the unique “collision avoidance” ID number sent by
the chip, and intercept and decrypt all the data (including your
digital photo and, in some countries, your digitized fingerprints)
needed to “clone” a perfect copy of your passport, forge other
identity credentials, or impersonate you.

Of relevance are the comments over at Bruce
Schneier’s weblog entry regarding the Riscure research into the Dutch
Biometric Passport’s lousy security.

Interestingly, as one commenter there notes, breaking the crypto may
be overkill; the knowledge that a person is carrying a passport from
a certain country, or set of countries, may be enough for certain
attackers.

I asked the Irish Passport Office about their RFID plans last April:

I’m an Irish citizen and passport-holder. I have been following
recent discussions in the US regarding the addition of RFID computer
chips to US passports, and I note that the US Department of State is
now indicating that this measure was made necessary due to recent
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards — namely
ICAO Doc 9303.

As a result, since Ireland is a signatory to ICAO regulations, this
raises the question as to whether Irish passports shall shortly
include similar RFID or “contactless chip” technology.

Can you tell me:

• if this is planned?

• is there a mechanism for public comment on this process?

• who could I further email to ask about this, if you do not know?

Disappointingly, I never received a reply. Someday I should really chase this up.

eu icao ireland passports rfid riscure security

This post was written by Justin, source: RFID “e-Passports”