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.

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.

Still too invasive

[phr1]

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.

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.

Re:Writing RFID tags?

[Anonymous Coward]

We re-write ours at work all the time. With the right equipment, they can be re-writen on the the fly.

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.