Related Question: apologies my background is not tech, does anyone have insight if "hacking" documents like this is easier or harder today as things move digital?
Ignoring paper passports for a moment, as records move to digital over physical paper, will adding or removing names become easier or harder?
Modern passports have an NFC chip in them which holds a digitally signed version of the passport data. Some of them are more sophisticated chips that are also uncloneable (but not all of them).
Even the basic form of the chip prevents the creation of entirely fictional passports, assuming the integrity of the official passport issuing infrastructure. My understanding is that modern passport fraud therefore tends to be based on stealing passports on demand from someone who looks like the client, and/or forging passports that aren't protected by the chip.
I second this. I have interviewed a substantial number of people in London who entered the UK on someone else's passport (sometimes rented not stolen). I also noted when travelling into the UK with someone who holds a UK Biometric Residence Permit that no use was made of the biometric data: The border agent just looked at the photo and at the person the old fashioned way.
It should get harder in general. But when people screw up the security of their design and then still blindly trust technology (like boarding passes), it is easier to pass a forgery.
Certainly not when it was as common as it was during WW2 for 16 and 17 year olds to lie about their age and enlist, or as things got down to the wire, take anybody who could fit in a stahlhem and fire a panzerfaust into the Volksturm.
My granfather was referred to as "old man" or "gramps" when he got drafted into the navy towards the end of the war. He was 25.
Is it actually common to refer to 18 year olds as children today? Or is that a US thing? I considered myself a grown up at that age; and it wouldn't occur to me to call someone who is older than 15 a kid.
"College kid" is a common term in US media. In my (European) country, we call them "young" (as in, "Young invents device" or "Two youngs were yesterday found ..."), not children.
You probably use the word that translates as "youth". (Jugend, unge etc).
It was normal in Britain, examples are youth hostel, youth centre, Fountain of Youth.
But in the last 20 years or so, I think it's been used negatively so often ("drunken youths", "aggressive youths") that if you begin with "a group of youths..." most people will expect something bad. "A group of teenagers" or "a group of children" is neutral.
As an adjective, it's still fine. "Youth football team" and so on is fine.
The drinking age in the U.S. was and is 21. The voting age up until around WWII was also 21. I believe many financial contracts aren't allowed to be entered into until 21 either. It's not unreasonable to consider 18 as "practically" a child since they weren't really an adult though may be closer to an adult than not.
For literally holding holding the fates of others -- quite possibly, their only chance at survival -- in your bare hands, yes, 18 is far too young and tender of an age.
Hmm. Great story, although it gets somewhat dark towards the end. He may have started out as a noble forger saving children from the Nazis but it sounds like he kept going for decades and made false passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked. "I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal" sounds a lot like post-hoc rationalization. Forging passports is all about dealing with tiny details. Understanding why your customers want false papers seems a lot larger than just a "detail". He wouldn't have forged papers to help the Nazi's I assume, but apparently after the war ended he somehow lost his discerning nature.
I'm also 100% not buying his story about never doing it for profit. During WW2, sure, I can buy that. For the three decades he continued afterwards, when it was apparently close to full time work? He was a professional underground forger who made passports for whoever wanted them, no questions asked, even as the difficulty and sophistication of the needed equipment constantly rose. Hell yes he asked for money.
I guess the millions of innocent people deported and killed by the nazis in front of him gave him a different perspective on what's a detail and what's not. Perspective probably different than green-pastures-based ones.
I do not endorse breaking the law, and I wouldn't do it myself. But sometimes it is possible to understand where other people are coming from.
Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Lots of people came out of WW2 scarred but did not go on to become professional criminals. The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.
The article doesn't state which rebel groups that used violence he supported. It could well be that the rebel groups that 'used violence in Africa' are the independence fighters in Algiers and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It could well be his work supported other rebel groups that didn't deserve any support but you can't conclude that from the article.
>The article flat out says that some of the groups he worked with were rebel forces in Africa trying to overthrow governments, not exactly people who are famous for their cuddly nature.
Granted, thanks for insisting I didn't realize that, missed that part. I think like you that his good intentions might have gone too far and turned into rationalized behaviour.
The Battle of Algiers covers that particular mess, and it was straight out banned in France until 1971, five years after its release. It took that long for the French to admit that they were perhaps not the aggrieved party in that particular conflict.
I don't think "fake passports for rebels" would even warrant a mention on a list of "bad things that happened in Africa in the 20th century". Or the 21st century. They've already had a war that would've counted as a "World War" if it were in Europe or America. [0]
"I can't deal with the details because all humans are equal"
You appear to have misquoted. The word was not details; it was death:
“I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”
Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same. Those two positions are contradictory: either he was very discerning about his clients and they were not all the same, or the motives of his clients were details and he didn't pay attention to them. He claims both at once.
> Yet he also says he didn't care who he made forged documents for because everyone is the same.
I've read the article 3x now trying to find this statement.
I can find stuff like he'd "work only for causes he believed in". I can find where he says "All humans are equal", but that hardly means what you make it out to mean (hell, the US Declaration of Independence says that; doesn't mean the US issues visas to ISIS).
The need for fake documents to escape violence hardly ended with WWII. I owe my existence to a Soviet customs agent who accepted a bribe to seal my grandfather into a Czech cargo train.
“I saved lives because I can’t deal with unnecessary deaths — I just can’t,” he told me. “All humans are equal, whatever their origins, their beliefs, their skin color,” he later added. “There are no superiors, no inferiors. That is not acceptable for me.”
He describes his work as "saving lives" in every case, as if every passport he ever made was for someone running from persecution, as if every case for 30+ years was as black and white as WW2.
Yet the article also says "He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century" and that he did it full time. That doesn't sound very discerning to me. Unless you're going to claim that 20th century conflicts were all a simple matter of good vs evil which could be immediately assessed.
He can claim whatever he likes about his life and how he always chose the side of the angels in every single conflict - there is presumably no good way to check the veracity of his claims. But color me skeptical.
Even a war between two horrible groups (think Assad vs. ISIS) has innocent bystanders caught up in it wanting to escape. You're reading enormous amounts of negativity into a small amount of info that provides little evidence to support it.
He endorses many causes, e.g the Algerian resistance. You may disagree with the cause, but i am not sure how you can deduct he did it it for money and not conviction. And why embracing a cause necessarily means having to know everything about the people who are part of it?
More info about his life and causes in the presentation of the book here:
A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money, perhaps because he claims he didn't. But that's not consistent with the rest of the article, so why should he be immediately believed? Just because it's a nice story?
From the article:
He had two kids soon after World War II, but couldn’t tell them or his ex-wife about his underground work, so they didn’t know why he rarely visited. Girlfriends assumed he was absent because he’d been cheating.
His business took him away from home so frequently that he was unable to maintain stable relationships at all until he quit for good. We can deduce that forging documents was therefore not a rare occurrence - it was happening all the time. It also seems to have involved a lot of travel, which in the years he was active was nowhere near as cheap as today.
He estimates that in 1967 alone, he supplied forged papers to people in 15 countries.
Not to 15 people, but people in 15 countries. That does not sound like a small operation.
He went on to forge papers for people in practically every major conflict of the mid-20th century.
Forging passports that could pass muster around the world for decades on end is not something one does as a hobby. It takes significant time and presumably in the later stages serious lab equipment. Given his post-forging career as a photographer - not the most lucrative of trades - where did he get the money to fund his forging activities if not by charging for it?
It is difficult for me to reconcile this self-proclaimed image Kaminsky projects of a hobbyist who neutrally saves lives out of the goodness of his heart, with all the other evidence in the article that he was both highly political and running an international criminal operation up until the point he got scared of being caught.
The only evidence we have of his noble intentions are what he says they were. And just in case we think he's a humble and modest person, from the book website:
“My life as a forger is one long, uninterrupted resistance… against inequality, segregation, racism, injustice, fascism and dictatorships.”
>A lot of people seem to be struggling with this notion that he did it for money
Who? I wonder if you struggle that people can do many things without charging for it. .If you good at your trade as a forgerer, and you work with organization like the Algerian Resistance, and -if- expensive equipment was needed as you claim without backing it up, I could see an oragnization funding it.
And he would keep doing it for free, not making money out of it. Out of conviction.
>It is difficult for me to reconcile [...]
A lot of people who fight politically, especially those outside the limelight, do it because they believe this is the right thing to do for others. I don't recall reading "neutrally", only causes he believes in.
If his success was dependent upon the goodwill of some mysterious organisation, why not give them a share of the credit too, even if just anonymously?
I think maybe the HN community is so heavily open source/software oriented that it's hard to realise that most complex, long term efforts in the world do need funding, even if they aren't full time. Even most artists need some sort of funding, hence why his photography was commercial. Passports, even quite old passports, have all sorts of anti-forging techniques that take time to overcome. I think the book mentions the invention of watermarking ... and that's really just the start. Here's an article on US Passports:
Kaminsky also forged French currency, which is also rather non-trivial and has been so for a long time. This isn't open source where you can buy a thousand dollars worth of equipment and the rest is just your free time, donated to the world. Obtaining the specialised equipment, building up a network capable of securely and anonymously routing forged documents across the world, training new generations of forgers - all this takes a lot of time and effort.
Many survivors fight for good cause a life long. I met one who said today he'd try to become a hacker.
I think it is very plausible and his underground contacts through which the later forging happened provided some trust. He would also see the amount of children he makes passports for and know their destination. He also might have forged easier to fake passports of neighboring countries, rather than EU/US ones.
The other thing is: Who needs fake passports anyways? Armies certainly don't. That leaves refugees, terrorists and corrupt people. Terrorists and corrupt people probably are organized enough to have someone among themselves to do their passports. The bit of control about who gets his passports might have been good enough for him to decide it will do more good than harm.
Starting in 1963, he assisted various leftist movements from Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Saint-Domingue, Haiti), Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, South Africa) and from Portugal (then under Salazar's dictatorship) and Francoist Spain.[6] He trained a lot of people in forgery in order to support them in their struggle against dictatorships.
I'm not sure who wrote that wiki page, but "leftist movement" in the context of mid-20th century Latin America means groups like FARC, which were very much armies and terrorists. The claim that this was done "against dictatorships" is very clever: it is technically true but disguises the fact that the groups he supported were simply trying to replace the current dictatorship with their own.
Moreover, the moment you train lots of people, you obviously lose any ability to control how those skills are used.
The more I read about this guy the more grey his story becomes.
So you think it was overall a bad thing that he fought against dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and many South American dictatorship? You think the world would be a better place with more dictatorships, Pinochet-style leadership?
I understand you can dislike the FARC. I hope you have the same level of disdain for the Colombian paramilitaries and Government exactions.
"According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_C...
What? Replacing one dictatorship with another doesn't solve any problems at all - it's literally not a fight worth supporting. How could anyone rationalise otherwise?
Tell me more about the dictatorships replacing Salazar and Franco.
Honestly, I don't think you're judging the man fairly. You point out everything he could possibly have done wrong and completely ignore his good deeds.
Just wondering what the ethical difference is between making false papers allowing anonymous travel and making encryption allowing anonymous communication?
On a similar note, there's Ho Feng-Shan. He worked at the consulate in Vienna and saved over 3,000 Jews by giving them visas to Shanghai so they can leave Austria and escape Nazi persecution.
Ignoring paper passports for a moment, as records move to digital over physical paper, will adding or removing names become easier or harder?
Thinking of the guy who was able to fake a first class lounge airplane ticket: https://mic.com/articles/150812/this-guy-figured-out-how-to-...
TL;DR what is harder vs. easier: paper ID forgery or digital ID forgery?