Foil Those Electronic Pickpocket Stoppers

... says electronic security expert Bruce Schneier, crystallizing the view of many: "As weird as it sounds, wrapping your passport in tinfoil helps. The tinfoil people, in this case, happen to be correct."The issue is bigger than just the new style of passports, which contain chips that emit information that can be read by a scanner. We're also talking about your Metro SmarTrip card, your employee ID/building access card, your automatic highway toll pass, the newest wave of credit cards and gas purchasing cards, even digital drivers' licenses being developed in some states.All of these nifty and oh-so-convenient bits of plastic employ versions of what's known as radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. That is, they toss out bits of data that are caught by receivers, with little or no contact, just through the air in some cases. The new credit cards, such as MasterCard's PayPass, don't have to be swiped through a machine. ...

some security watchdogs assert the need to cover, or shield, these cards when they aren't in use. A thin metalized nylon can do the trick, based on the classic Faraday cage design, to disrupt RFID communications.

...  A couple of years ago, when the State Department announced the new style of passports, EPIC recommended that people wrap their passports in tinfoil. Instead, the State Department addressed such concerns by embedding metallic shielding in the front and back cover of the passport books. In addition, the new "passport cards" to be offered to U.S. citizens who travel frequently between the United States and Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean will come with similarly shielded sleeves.

The fact that the State Department has resorted to shielding material -- does that mean the threat is real, that shielded wallets for other types of cards are a good idea? Schneier, for one, thinks the passport books are still vulnerable when they are open.

But spokesmen for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security say the shields are just an extra level of security for documents that are already safe because of encryption and the nature of the information on them. Even when the passport books are open, the digital information can be read by a scanner no more than a few inches away, says spokesman Steve Royster. ...via Electronic Pickpocket Stoppers - washingtonpost.com.