janelane wrote:
From form DS-11 for my U.S. passport renewal:

Early in 2005, the U.S. Department of State will begin issuing a new type of passport containing an embedded electronic chip and called an "Electronic Passport".

Issuance of this new passport will be phased in during an 18-month period. It is expected that by mid-2006 nearly all U.S. passports will be issued in this new format. The new passport will not require special handling or treatment, but like previous versions should be protected from extreme bending and from immersion in water. The electronic chip must be read using specially formatted readers, and is not susceptible to unauthorized reading.

Well, if the government says so, then it must be true. :-S Any ideas on safeguarding the illicit chip once I've received my passport?

-janelane, warily

You'll notice if you read the fine print in the law that if the rfid chip should become inoperable then it will just fallback to using the good old fassioned version that doesn't attract kidnapping...

there are plenty of ways that a person could make this chip inoperable (though it would probably be illegal to do so, so of course no-one should do this)...one easy way would be to submit the rfid chip to an alternating magnetic field at the resonant frequency of the tuned circuit (i think its like 13mhz or something, i'd have to go back and read) with way more amps than the chip will take...i forget the exact power you need but its in the spec for those chips, its got a big warning stating that subjecting it to more than that for a period of time will make the chip dead...

of course you shouldnt do that or anything...cause like they said, only the good guys can figure out how rfid works...

--Mike

janelane wrote:
From form DS-11 for my U.S. passport renewal:

Early in 2005, the U.S. Department of State will begin issuing a new type of passport containing an embedded electronic chip and called an "Electronic Passport".

Issuance of this new passport will be phased in during an 18-month period. It is expected that by mid-2006 nearly all U.S. passports will be issued in this new format. The new passport will not require special handling or treatment, but like previous versions should be protected from extreme bending and from immersion in water. The electronic chip must be read using specially formatted readers, and is not susceptible to unauthorized reading.

Well, if the government says so, then it must be true. :-S Any ideas on safeguarding the illicit chip once I've received my passport?

-janelane, warily

I can think of a couple ways (one of which involves my 2.5 kV transformer) but, as mike said, "safeguarding" by purposeful annihilation is probly illegal. Which is why i'm glad i got my passport a couple months ago, *just* before this shit went live. We'll see how it goes in 10 years.

That being said, storing it inside a faraday cage ought to keep it silent, so foil, or conductive wire mesh (if it's fine enough). I'm guessing ESD bags aren't quite conductive enough, but who knows. I'm sure the web will be replete with products and howtos in very short order. Act now! Get your Passport Blocker 3000 : all leather cow exterior, but with a flexible metallic interior to block those nasty RF fields!