LuminousVoid

The US government is planning on issuing RFID enabled passports holding your picture and other information in the chip beggining next spring. This article highlights how the previously discussed promiscuous environmental scanning feature of RFID poses a privacy problem:

Before the end of the year, the first U.S. biometric passport will be issued with a tiny computer chip and antenna embedded inside it. The chip will contain a digital image of the person’s face, along with other information such as name, birth date and birthplace. The data on the chip can be picked up wirelessly using a radio signal.

When the traveler enters the United States, border-control officials will snap a digital photo of the person, scan the data from the passport and run a facial-recognition software program to compare the two images.

The system is designed to prevent forged passports by making sure the original passport holder and the person standing at the immigration counter are one and the same.

The problem, security and privacy experts say, is that the technical standard chosen for the system leaves passport data unprotected.

The technology allows data on the chip to be read remotely using radio frequency identification or RFID.

That means the passport does not have to be opened or even come in contact with a scanning device. Its contents can be read remotely — some estimates claim as far away as 30 feet — without the passport holder knowing anything about it.

The article notes that the system is to promote border security, but that encryption was discounted as harmful to the interoperability required with other countries. Apparently the difficulty of obtaining and creating blank chips is expected to make this new passport more secure than the supposedly easier to falsify paper and photograph ones.

Will Americans fearful of identity thieves catch on to the new trend?

One simple but effective solution may deter unwanted snoops . . . Cover the passport with aluminum foil. Radio frequencies have a hard time penetrating metal.