Subverting RFID Chips in ID Docs

Written by Renee Ferguson; Illustrated by Stephen Anderson

Now that RFID-chipped passports are being widely distributed by the U.S. State Department and other chipped ID documents are under discussion, the question remains: How do you disable the damn thing if you dont want to broadcast your person

Sort of like a cattle probe, but for passports. The idea is the electronic probe would essentially shock the tag into disrepair.

The Mylar bag, once sent by California’s Sun Pass program to customers worried about privacy, wlll block the RF tag from being read-sort of like how lead blocks Supermans X-ray vision from seeing through Louis Lane’s blouse. Tin foil will serve pretty

H20 will fry anything electronic. Since the RFID chips in documents are passive-they’re ‘awakened’ when nudged by a reader, and thus don’t require a battery-water might not work as effectively as, say, a cattle prod. But there’s a remote possibility it co

Pop an RFID-chipped passport in the microwave, set it on high and watch it spark. The cooking chamber is full of 2.54 GHz electromagnetic waves, with a wavelength of about 12.4 cm. But remember what your Mom told you about putting metal in the microwav

Cut out the chip and carefully swap it with a friend’s chip, so you can trade identities for a day. Kind of like that movie where a girl magically becomes her mom and the other way around, except you get denied re-entry into the country and jailed.

Another tried and true method: Hit something solid with a heavy blunt object – a hammer is a commonly used example – and it will break. The result is likely not very subtle, and also probably a pretty good reason for customs detainment.

Seriously, if someone is close enough to your RFID passport to be able to read the tag, they are too close to you period. If you aren’t suspicious of a stranger pressed up against you in the immigration line, you have bigger things than RFID to be worri