[ale] OT electronics in us passport

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Thu, 2012-07-12 at 10:11 -0400, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> Hi all,

> I recently got a US passport. On the back page, it says "This document
> contains sensitive electronics. For best performance, do not bend,
> perforate, or expose to extreme temperatures,"

Which reminds me.  I need to get mine renewed.  :-P

It's an NFC (Near Field Communications) chip (AKA RFID) like the "tap
and go" credit cards, MARTA subway tickets, European livestock trackers,
some pet identifiers and a lot of "wave at the reader" employee badges
you see everywhere.  NFC/RFID is also coming to smartphones for "Google
Wallet" and "tap and go" type credit card applications.

These have been in US passports for some time now.  Some people object
to them and have deliberately damaged them.  Might not be a smart move.
A family was denied access to a flight just this last year when a
child's passport would not read through the NFC reader, even though the
optical OCR information contains all the same information and was still
readable.  They claimed the passport had been dropped.  Since the rest
of theirs were readable, it seams reasonable but they still missed their
flight.

> Does anyone know what's in there? Do I need to get a metal wallet to
> carry it?

There are some shielding passport wallets available and you can get
these thin shielding envelopes.  Having attended an eye opening talk by
Adam (Look Ma!  I'm a Cow!) Laurie (he demonstrates cloning NFC / RFID
takes including a European cow identification capsule) I have a small
stack of them he was passing out at his talks.  They basically look like
they are made of Tyvec, impregnated with carbon and coated with a
metallic looking coating on the outside.  They're not stiff like a metal
wallet would be.

This looks something like what Adam was passing out...

http://www.amazon.com/Passport-Protector-Secure-Block-Theft/dp/B002LGY1CY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342104581&sr=8-1&keywords=passport+rfid+blocker

I would definitely carry my new passport in a shielded carrier.  It's
already been demonstrated that someone could read out enough information
over NFC which would allow them, when combined with other readily
available public information about you, to create a cloned passport.
The feds wanted to claim it couldn't be done but it has been already
done as a proof of concept.  If you want to throw the bucks, this looks
like a nice organizer / RFID shielding wallet...

http://www.amazon.com/RFID-Blocking-Executive-Organizer-Passport/dp/B004GT9JOO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1342104237&sr=8-5&keywords=passport+holder

May get one of those myself when my new one comes.

If you have any "tap and go" credit cards, I would get sleeves for them
too...

> Sincerely,

> Ron

Regards,
Mike

> --
> 
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
> 
> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
> 
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
> 
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo

-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 482 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20120712/ff35c996/attachment-0001.bin