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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.
It means metal detectors will find your passport cover. When I go through airport security, I get wanded and they look in my wallet, which bugs the heck out of me. I usually carry my passport and cash in a nylon neck pouch though, and that doesn't set off the metal detectors. I don't like the sound of this new wire mesh thing. Big Brother and for that matter any club or courthouse I might visit has no need to know whether I'm carrying a passport.
You can't write to an RFID tag, the data is burned in.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You're not trying to stop a static magnetic field (there's no need) -- you're trying to stop a electromagnetic wave, and stopping either part of it (electric or magnetic) will do it.
This is an early precedent towards a totalitarian state. We say, "Okay, that sounds resonable." Then, they do it with something else, something slightly more intrusive. You know the government wants to put tracking devices in every car for "taxation purposes". Another precendent. There are already black boxes in most newer model cars that save some of the statistics of your driving. Call me paranoid, but I don't like this kind of stuff, and I seem to be in the minority.
Hang on, this solves the "random people can steal biometrics by wardriving" problem, but what about the "US Government now knows your fingerprint etc details" problem?
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
It sounds like someone's getting an RFID kickback...why not use a barcode? Proven, cheap, and doesn't require new wars for foil...
Ok, lets recap: they are going to sell magnetic shield with those RFID passports, right? That's briliant! I also have some prime estate on mars I could sell them at a discount. A real steal!
Note that NOT using RFID is not what they propose. It is really impressive to see how far they are willing to go in order to justify pushing corporate interest despite its lack of use. There is plenty of technological solutions that can do the job, they have to insist on the one that won't...
Um, because it's fucking hilarious?
"Tin-foil-hat" is an idiom used to refer to the pathetic counter-measures that privacy minded citizens (read: conspiracy-theory freaks like me) gravitate towards.
Ah, the kids these days...
I like my false sense of security.
If the purpose of the wire mesh is to prevent the passport from being read without opening it then why didn't they just use a 2-D optical bar code that is visible only on the inside of the passport? Seems like somebody wanted RFID for the sex-appeal factor rather than any objective need.
exactly what I wanted to say. Connect the "faraday cage" with the rfid chip and you have an rfid chip with a really big antenna!
See pictures of tits
A further point: RFID's supposed advantage of high capacity for data storage is easily rivalled by a full-page 2D barcode.
A standard PDF417 barcode contains about 1kB of data in 35 x 9mm. That's 315mm^2. My passport has a useful printable area of roughly 9600mm^2. That means that a single passport-page-sized 2D barcode could hold roughly 30kB.
Of course, anyone can print barcodes. But then, relying on the inaccessibility of RFID programming and reading equipment is security through obscurity at its worst.
It may take some time for RFID readers and writers to be commercially available, but it will happen, just as anyone today can buy magnetic card equipment.
Real security comes not from the inaccessibility of the physical storage medium, but from the data itself, specifically, through cryptographic signing.
RFID is truly a pointless technology for personal identification.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Well, it's not exactly rational. But it certainly makes sense by government standards. Instead of a cheap contact-based solution, use an expensive RFID solution... then use an expensive passport cover to make it not work at a distance.