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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.
A stun gun is portable, works great, leaves no marks, and has pretty blue dancing lights.
Err... couldn't you just put your passports in whatever bag you carry on the plane? That way when you go through the metal detectors, you just take your bag off, and you don't have to worry about passports showing up via metal detection. Keep them close together in the bag and when x-rayed they may not even be able to tell there's two in there. Though I could be very wrong about this, so take it with a grain of salt ;)
Oh, there's no need to wait--that's already here! This site sells shielded shirts, aprons, and even socks! And yes, they also have a shielded baseball cap.
Barcodes can't truly store information, and they misread all the time. I work at a library that uses barcodes, and the bc scanners will misread every 1 out of 50 books, or try to read the desk, mouse.. what have you. And a misread in this situation is not what you want.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
- They (incorrectly to their own knowledge) deny implications of RFID (in passports or otherwise) for the bearer's personal safety
- They want to force RFID chips inside passports
- Then they promise to shield it so the passport needs to be opened anyway - but could still be identified as e.g. a US one even when closed, and potentially still be read out with special (i.e. simply more powerful and/or sensitive) equipment, despite the apparent perception of security
- Unlike with optical reading, where the document can simply be put out of sight, the bearer has no way of knowing whether and when an RFID shield actually works
- Why pretend that only governments (or "the good guys" in general) would be able to procure RFID readers? This technology is not rocket science, and it could be every thug's dream come true (especially as the European Central Bank even seems to consider putting it into their money) - so "finally" for the nastier elements of society, remote assessment of who might be a "promising" victim e.g. for abduction, robbery or worse becomes possible
So there is always certain inconvenience -if not danger- to the bearer, but not a single valid reason for embedding RFID into a passport: If it needs to be opened anyway, and faster machine-readability than with the current (already standardized) printed text is required, a simple printed barcode would do, at much greater reliability. Make no mistake, if RFID is enforced even though it does not have any benefit in the proposed application, there have to be ulterior motives for its use - then, however, it is no conspiracy theory to suggest that future mischief is implied in this scenario.