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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.
Was that a rational thought from the government? I know it's cold enough for hell to freeze over, but...
Wow.
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!
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
... of tin foil companies were up by more than 5 points today.
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.
While I get the joke, you're wrong.
.05 meters of wavelength, or about 50 millimeters. A typical RF shield needs to block 1/4 of a wavelength, or .0125 meters, or just about half an inch.
The frequencies used by RFID at the most are 5.8GHz. That equates to about
In my book, that means about, oh, two strands per inch.
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.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
...they put metal wires in to keep others from accessing your information, big deal. How are they going to keep a thief from stealing your passport altogether?
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.
We re-write ours at work all the time. With the right equipment, they can be re-writen on the the fly.
It sounds like someone's getting an RFID kickback...why not use a barcode? Proven, cheap, and doesn't require new wars for foil...
i'm personally going to wait for o'reilly to release "passport hacks" before i start tinkering...
Get your torrents...
- 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.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.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
"You want wine? May I see your ID?"
American pulls out passport.
RFID snoopers who hang out nearby restaurant frequented by foreign tourists scoop up yet another id.
The best solution is to eliminate the stupid idea that you can send and receive vital information wirelessly.
However, baring that, somehow preventing the RFID from working unless you do something explicit to make it work should be sufficient. For example, the RFID chip won't send personally identifiying information unless it has a low voltage electrical contact that you can make by pressing a specifically marked spot in the passport marked "press here to activate wireless identification".
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.