Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Fran. objective: read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly
Submitted by Jim Brown on Mon, 07/13/2009 - 14:29
without ever leaving his car.
It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold.
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner downloaded to his laptop the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
Increasingly, government officials are promoting the chipping of identity documents as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.
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Try a metal wallet
There are places making stainless steel wallets that effectivly trap your chipped documents inside a scan proof envelope. You see the metal blocks the magnetic waves from triggering your device to talk back. You can always pull it out of your wallet if you intend to cross a border.
You could also run those puppies thru the microwave effectively frying the little circuits.
Now, doing this may reneder your card usuless to the bad guys scanning you in unknown ways, how frustrating it must be.... I guess they could arrest you for being unscannable or 'not having your papers'.
Maybe we could all just go burn them in protest in Washington like they did with draft cards....
Better yet, lets stop this insanity before it starts. Call your representatives and tell them in no uncertain terms, NO REAL ID, not in any form.