RFID-Reading Passport Scanners Installed

Kozar_The_Malignant writes, "Electronic passport scanners have been installed at SFO. Ten of the scanners were received last week and have now been put in service. Various creative responses have been discussed here before."

Comments

Re:Do passports already have RFID's in them?

[in2mind]

from the prev Slashdot article :

State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said existing passports will remain valid until they expire but, eventually, all U.S. passports -- about 13 million will be issued in 2006 -- will contain such chips

Range can be increased

[Bruce Perens]

There is a time-honored tradition of making RF signals go as far as possible. It's the first thing any kid tries with a walkie-talkie: how far can it go? It's possible to make RFID devices read from farther than designed by using higher power to energize the RFID and a higher-gain antenna to read its response. Certainly it will be practical to read these things as people walk through a door frame, with the proper equipment.

Bruce

Re:Do passports already have RFID's in them?

[malsdavis]

My mate got a new British passport a couple of weeks ago. The 2nd last page or so has a chip and a large rectangular loop of wire shaped in it. From what I remember, the rectangular loop of wire measured about 8cm long by 2cm high or so.

Here's a smallish picture of what the RFID bit looks like: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/11/1 8/npassport18.jpg

Re:Passport Cases Now Become Important

[kevin_conaway]

It already has a cover

Metallic anti-skimming material incorporated into the front cover and spine of the e-passport book prevents the chip from being skimmed, or read, when the book is fully closed;

Re:Wrapping your passport in Tinfoil?

[Bruce Perens]

Look up "Faraday Shield". It works, but I can think of some approaches to get through it, although I doubt that any current RFID device uses them. Testing is always a good idea. And aluminum foil is not the most attenuating material, just the cheapest and by far the most easily available one.

Bruce

Re:Passport Cases Now Become Important

[hcob$]

The problem is that people can read it while it's in your pocket, with the right equipment, wherever you go, all the time, hundreds of times per day. And having it in a mu-metal case when you do not expect it to be read would be a good security practice. Is that more clear?

I guess I'm going to be saying this often today. All you have to do is close the passport, there is a faraday cage in the cover that is completed when the cover is closed.

Re:Do passports already have RFID's in them?

[lcsjk]

I did some initial design for an RFID system last year. The credit card size unit has a microchip with memory and a coil of wire around the edge of the card (about 7cm x 5cm). THe coil is the secondary side of an air-core transformer and the reader (receiver) has the primary side. Note that it is not RF as in radio or telephone. It is a magnetic field. The reader has to send enough AC power through the air to the RFID coil so that a capacitor can be charged to give an operating voltage. When the voltage is high enough (milliseconds) the microchip will turn on and send its data to the receiver. My operating distance was small (less than 3 inches) because of limited reader power. However, if the reader had been transmitting more power from a longer distance (a few feet) I think it would have been able to read the data. The theory is easy, but the signal strength would have been smaller. We have equipment to read extremely small signals from space. Reading from a few feet away is most likely easy.

Re:Do passports already have RFID's in them?

[sarabiz]

Yes, they began putting them in as of at least Summer 2005. I know this because I got married and needed to change my name on my passport. This used to require a simple addendum to the back and was free. However, since I had the old non-RFID passport, I was required to pay ~$70 for a new one. Suck.