NO2ID

Does anybody know how powerful a magnetic field would need to be in order to permanently disable a passport's RFID? I do not really want to put my passport in the microwave for fear of having the chip go pop and having to explain to officials why the back page of my passport has become suspiciously charred and blackened.

I bought some small neodymium magnets off eBay a while ago which were listed as being rated N38 which apparently is fairly strong. Will they do or do I need something meatier?

I don't think magnets can kill the chip, try crushing it or puncturing it or cutting the anntena. I don't actually know if these ideas would work but its reported here that they should

http://www.spychips.com/faqs.html

Ah right. The booklet that comes with the passport warns that you shouldn't expose the chip to magnetic fields, but never mind and thanks for that link.

Does it?, Well then you would think there must be something bad about magnetic fields that will screw up something in the passport.

Afterall you can't belive everything you read on the internet

I'm sure we'll find out when no2id do some tests on the chips.........I believe they were going too do this in the near future.

If you move a conductor - the chip antenna /any of the metallic links in the chip - through a magnetic field, you induce a current in the conductor.

With a big field and fast movement, it may be possible to induce a current large enough to damage or destroy part of the chip. I can't remember enough of the maths - perhaps I wasn't paying attention in my electrical engineering course - perhaps my memory isn't what it was - this was nearly 40 years ago. Can anyone do the maths for us?

Similarly a strong Radio Frequency field may have the same effect - placing the chip near the antenna of a a CB radio (especially one of those "burner" high power transmitters) and transmitting for a few seconds may damage the chip.

So we should be careful not to expose our new passports to these hazards.

If you really want a strong magnetic field try to get a tour round a University Chemistry Department.

They have some machines called NMR machines that have very large magnetic fields. Try to stand next to one or better still give your passport a brisk rub against one and I'm sure that would do it. The magnetic field is strong enough to stop a pacemaker.

When doing my Ph.D I managed to wipe by accident about 3 or 4 bank cards simply by using them.

In hospitals they use 'MRI machines' which are basically the same thing.

Sadly they cost a few million pounds and not available from Ebay.

I wonder if dry ice would be cold enough to cause the chip damage?

Personally, at the moment they don't have any worthwhile info on the chip - I think it is better to leave it as is, rather than have them re-issue a new one to replace a damaged one, which is likely to entail the fully print, eye-burning interrogation process.

A magnet can kill the chip if its powerful enough. It will scramble the data into a un-usable mess.

I have two HDD Magets out of an old 5"1/4 inch MFM Drive from a 286 that can make your mobile phone go all wonky if they come close to it. I think they can kill a simple rfid chip. And just think you can buy sold as seen or non working drives for as little as £5 to get these magnets. Its within the reach of everyone

Just be careful tho as these kinds of magnets can kill off pc monitors and tvs etc, speakers and the like anything that relies on magnetic fields in fact.

Strange that HM Gov should make a statement about magnets. The chip is actually a small memory device and would be more prone to static discharge than magnetism.

still it requiers power of some sort to operate, either in a passive mode or an active mode, magnetic manipulation of these power sources can have the potential to render the data on the chips into an unreadable mess.

SmartCard / RFID memory is designed to be a bit more resilient than normal computer memory. SmartCard operating system software has to assume that the SmartCard will inevitably at some time be powered down midway through a memory read or write, and that the memory location, and the memory cells which are physically adjacent to it, and the microprocessor registers, will all have been corrupted, so there are usually rollback features - part of the reason why SmartCards / RFID chips are so comparatively slow.

Why are you worrying about trying to permanently disable the RFID chip ? Why not simply shield it with some aluminium foil ? That way you may not be subjected to extra delays and searches when you present your Passport at passport control

The biggest privacy risk is the shared database, not the Passport itself.

If your RFID chip in your Passport is not working, that will simply mean that British Airways or Avis care hire or whatever other authorised 3rd party company will still scan your face or fingerprints and verify them with the National Identity Verification service.

In doing so, they will have independently stored a copy of your biometric details, outside of the control and the alleged protections afforded by the Identity Cards Act 2006, so that they do not have to pay a Verification Service Fee every time you return as a customer in the future, and a time,date, location transaction entry will have been logged against your record on the National Identity Register audit trail log files.

If no online lookup has to be done, either at Passport Control (unlikely in the Uk, but perhaps at remote border posts around the world without online access), or by the authorised commercial company, and only the digital signature of your encoded biometrics have to be checked against your fingerprints or face etc., then perhaps this data tracking footprint will not end up on the central systems. However , you need a working RFID chip for that.

N.B. shielding your passport with aluminium foil might make you appear to be a drug smuggler or terrorist if you are being remotely scanned by a "see through your clothes" imaging device, but you are currently only likely to encounter one of these at an airport.

Shielding your RFID passport to stop any signal, should stop sneaky 3rd party commercial exploitation of the tracking potential of your RFID enabled passport, which will be a growing privacy risk, as more legitimate and illegally modified, extended range, reader equipment gets deployed.

It is also is more likely to counter any RFID sensor triggered terrorist bomb, which only really needs the unencrypted initial RFID radio protocol handshake, to imply that a UK passport holder is within lethal range. The actual personal data can be corrupted, and the bomb could still detonate.

A bomb could be specifically targeted at your (unencrypted) passport chip id, in which case, a small amount of data corruption, e.g. one or two bits, could either protect you from such a device, or it could accidentally trigger a device intended for someone else, or for a non-UK passport e.g. from the USA

The risk of such bombs is only theoretical at the moment, but there is no inherent safeguard built in to the Biometric Passports e.g. by not using Radio at all, but instead using a contact smartcard or an optical 2D barcode etc.

8-)

Meh i'm not focusing on disabling it infact I have got one of those new covers for passorts that is RF shielded so the chip cant broadcast out of it, I also have a new wallet on the way in a similar vein.

But it remains technically possible with strong enough magnets & ppl here seem to think otherwise, the needed power from the magnets need not be the kind of power you find in MRI machines but simple HDD magnets most ppl can get hold of if they were inclined to try.

A cheap source of powerful magnets for experimentation can be found here:

http://www.magnetsales.co.uk/

do be careful...

There's another type of magnet that many of us have in our homes that might be worth some experimentation when trying to distroy/disable RIDF chips if you have'nt upgraded your veiwscreen [i mean tv] or computer monitor and still have an old fashion CRT tv or monitor there's the focusing coil on the neck of the CRT tube take the back of your tv/monitor place passport ec on focusing coil and see what the omnibus edition of eastenders of your efforts to beat your best score at space invaders does to the ridf chip ps i still have my old fashioned hand cranked 1000volt megger i wonder if that would do anything to the ridf chip

Really? Could it not work the other way? I always understood that audio and video tapes should always be kept away from speakers because the magnetic fields could wipe them. (Is the same true for discs?)

Lets say that you do disable the magnets in the biometric passport. What happens when you go to the check-in at an airport? Will the passport be rejected? Or if not there, at your destination, when you get to passport control?

Where does one get hold of those?

If I can't, I'm beginning to think of a DIY job:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A337060

inserting the metal shield or whatever in the appropriate place.

You can find the wallents on many different tech/geek shop sites. simply googling rfid wallet should give you a plethora of results.

I cant recall where I got the passport slip from though.

I'd suggest starting with www.thinkgeek.com

be aware that it is an american site however, but they do have both i think and it will give you a very clear picture of what to expect

Since my posts above I've searched a bit and found:

http://www.rfid-shield.com/products.php

http://www.lessemf.com/fabric.html

which are American sites,

and this German site, which looks quite good, if anyone's German is better than mine!

http://www.pointprotect.de/

however not all of the links work, so I'm not sure that it is possible to order direct.

which I came across via this discussion forum on the merits of ducting tape (so is it any use?)

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2 ... cking.html

which also had this link to another American site:

http://www.emvelope.com/

A distinct lack of anything available in Britain though, unless anyone knows of any?

A 10 second burst in a microwave should kill any RFID chip

But could cause quite noticable damage to your passport requiring you to get another one thereby defeating the whole purpose of having renewed early for 10 years of freedom

It would be extremely stupid to attempt to disable the chip. (Also BTW a criminal offence.) The reasons are that 1. it would quite likely make travel more difficult, if notionally permitted AND 2. it would mean that when the failure were detected HM Government would insist that you replace the passport under the intrusive Lost/Damaged procedure - and in any case under newer protocols than the passport you have. That means you would be encouraging the authorities to collect information about you, and accelerating your inclusion on the database.

A blast from a tesla coil will kill any chip.

I have a question because people keep telling me I'm paranoid whenever this sort of conversation comes up: what risk is there, right now, against which to protect ourselves we need to do this sort of thing to our passports? What info. does the chip contain now and what, if anything, else is it used for?

Anyone interested in getting a shield for all their important cards and passports drop me a line at antirfidwallet@hotmail.com.

I will make them personally for you, in a choice of colours! Hand made in the UK!!

Cheers

DAN [/url]

If you can locate the chip, by using light and shadows, you SHOULD be able to notice the little square bump, just cut into the chip with a razor or sharp knife. Little tiny incisions, then bend that particular area once you've given it some slices, you should hear a crack. The chip is now broken and useless. I tried this on my ATM card and it works. The problem about the magnetic filed is that it also wipes out the magStrip (the black magnetic strip) info, rendering your card completely useless.

As Geoff said, a magnetic field causes inductance in circuitry (that's how kinetic watches / dynamo bike lights work), so a strong enough one will work in tandem with the resistance of the circuitry and produce enough heat to melt the circuit.

I recommend neodymuim magnets. Simply placing one on the chip won't necessarily work. You need to wiggle it to cause continual inductance.