I rarely carry my passport with me while traveling, except when I need
it to get through passport control. A photocopy of the photo and
information page is enough in most cases for ID, even in banks. I also
make a copy of the visa stamp in countries where they actually care
about seeing the visa, but that's rare in western Europe [the Swiss only
wanted to sell us a yearly sticker for the autobahn--didn't care about
the passports at all], and not usually a problem in eastern Europe or
Turkey either. Having extra copies of my passport made things a bit
smoother last year when it was stolen in a robbery. Fortunately, I got a
replacement in October, before RFID!
It's more important to protect against someone reading the data in the
chip while they walk past you. It's fairly inexpensive to make a reader,
and not too much more to buy one. Although gummint claims that the chip
can only be read within several feet of it, some readers can detect the
data from further away. I think I can be safer revealing personal data
when I choose to do it, rather than with a chip that's in a passport
because some corporate creep gave a lot of money to political campaigns
so that his company could sell RFID chips and make a lot of money at our
expense, even though it's unnecessary and intrusive.
Your odds of being in a hostage situation is very very low. The odds of
being somewhere friendly that's being bombed somewhat randomly,
targeting groups of civilians [UK, Spain, Italy, N. Ireland, Greece,
Germany, Turkey], is a lot higher. However, this isn't something to joke
about, especially if you've ever traveled in dangerous locations. We're
rarely identified as American tourists--why make it more obvious? I'm
appalled that our government continues to do so much to make it more and
more dangerous for Americans who travel. Thank goodness, we continue to
meet lots of people everywhere we go who are very sympathetic to those
of us who have to live with a fascist administration.
Use foil and magnets. Don't destroy the chip. I think there's a big
fine, too.
Betty
Yes, it does. In many hostage situations the first thing terrorists do
is collect passports. Up to now we've been protected against blind
terrorists, but with RFID even visually impaired terrorists can tell
we're from the US!
On 7/12/07, Constance Warner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Sorry to be so paranoid, but--
Doesn't the presence of a passport RFID show that you are a U.S. citizen
to anybody who has the right equipment and who is looking for U.S.
citizens with purposes in mind that don't bode well for said citizens?
************************************************************************
* ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <==
* ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <==
* Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name
* Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST
* Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L
* New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress
* Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
************************************************************************
* List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
* RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml
* Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived
************************************************************************
