RFID Cards to Include Tin Foil Hats?

An anonymous reader writes "The tinfoil hat finally gains government approval. From the story: 'Wrap an RFID chip [of the US passport] inside a Faraday cage, and the electromagnetic waves from the chip reader can't get in and activate the chip. The State Department says it may use the principle to give travelers an added sense of security. No, there won't be rolls of aluminum foil included with every passport. Instead, the passport cover may include a network of wires woven into the fabric. Fold the passport shut, and there's your Faraday cage. Even Schneier agrees that a properly shielded passport cover should solve the problem. He wonders why this wasn't included in the original plans for the new passports. 'It took a bunch of criticism before they even mentioned it,' Schneier said. And he hopes the anti-snooping technology is thoroughly tested before the new passports are introduced next spring.'" We've also seen this suggested in the past.

Comments

Wow....

[Kid Zero]

Was that a rational thought from the government? I know it's cold enough for hell to freeze over, but...

Wow.

Let me get this straight...

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

I can't wait for people to start selling clothing with built in faraday cages, or a stylist alternative to the woeful 'tinfoil hat'... a (insert favorite h4x0r phrase here) hat with a built in faraday cage!

Oh Man.

[jellomizer]

It is time to make a new conspiracy theory. The current one that they government wants to use our passports to spy on us just got defunct. Maybe we can not trust the government issue Aluminum foil and it will be some sort of hidden spy method.

Re:Oh Man.

[forkazoo]

The metal wires in the cover are probably just an antenna, because they couldn't get good signal from the satellites, and don't want to bother having somebody follow you.

Some useful advice

[ReelOddeeo]

Personally I have found that if you use a double layer of tinfoil when fashioning your headwear that it more than doubles the effectiveness! This is due to a resonance effect between the two layers of tinfoil which resonates precisely at the frequency of the government's invisible brain lasers.

In addition, if you fashion two antennas on the top of your hat instead of the usual one, it increases the effectiveness by an additional 37 percent.

(+5 Misinformative)

Stocks ...

[DanteLysin]

... of tin foil companies were up by more than 5 points today.

Orbital Mind Control Lasers

[Ranger]

They want you to wear tin foil hats. It enhances the ability of the orbital mind control lasers to control you. The only sure protection is to shove your head up your ass.

I for one welcome our new RFID overlords.

hacks

[torrents]

i'm personally going to wait for o'reilly to release "passport hacks" before i start tinkering...

Re:What exactly is Faraday cage?

[panurge]

Michael Faraday was a 19th century experimenter who worked for the Royal Institution in London. Unfortunately many of the members were extremely eccentric and tended to throw rotten fruit at lecturers they did not approve of. Faraday solved this problem by surrounding the lecturer's podium with a cage of fine brass mesh, through which the lecturer could be seen but which repelled the rotten fruit. Glass was no good because the fruit stuck to it, obscuring the view.

Later, of course, Faraday discovered that the cage prevented electromagnetic waves with wavelengths greater than a quarter of the mesh size from escaping, and it is in this form that it has entered technical terminology.

This information brought to you by the Department for the Dissemination of Less than Reliable Data.