All that and a bag of chips
Mar. 5th, 2005 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberThe recent warnings about Frienditto have brought to mind a warning I've been meaning to send out... It may be too late by now (remarkable how little info there is about our right to privacy slipping away, eh?), but:
Starting the "spring of 2005," all new US passports will have RFID chips in them that broadcast "the passport holder's name, address, date and place of birth, and photograph" unencrypted, in the clear. Current, low-tech passports, however, will remain valid until they expire.
So: if your passport is due for renewal any time in the next few years, I'd say renew it now. If you don't have a passport, for gods's sake, get one--how will you be able to flee the country on a moment's notice without one?
And if I'm too late with the warning, and you get a chipped passport, I suppose it's back to the old mylar bag solution. Or the Maxwell's Silver Hammer solution.
Starting the "spring of 2005," all new US passports will have RFID chips in them that broadcast "the passport holder's name, address, date and place of birth, and photograph" unencrypted, in the clear. Current, low-tech passports, however, will remain valid until they expire.
So: if your passport is due for renewal any time in the next few years, I'd say renew it now. If you don't have a passport, for gods's sake, get one--how will you be able to flee the country on a moment's notice without one?
And if I'm too late with the warning, and you get a chipped passport, I suppose it's back to the old mylar bag solution. Or the Maxwell's Silver Hammer solution.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-06 03:14 pm (UTC)