It’s a privacy issue. I would never recommend anyone do this. My passport
just expired. What to do…oops, I dropped it.
cb
All passports issued by the US State Department after
January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it
easy for officials ñ and hackers ñ to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid
about strangers slurping up your identity? Hereís what you can do about it. But
be careful ñ tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison. Not
to mention the ìspecialî customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the
front cover; the chip is embedded in the back.2) Sorry, ìaccidentallyî leaving your passport in the jeans
you just put in the washer wonít work. Youíre more likely to ruin the passport
itself than the chip.3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave ñ the chip could
burst into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled
burnt passport?4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a
blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesnít invalidate the
passport, so you can still use it.
Source: Wired 15.01:
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