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Comment by BuildTheRobots | Hacker News Reader

"He counsels staff and clients to keep their credit cards in specially shielded envelopes to or stack them one on top of the other so the signals are jumbled up."

Slightly terrifying advice. A few years ago Kris Padgett (iirc) demonstrated that nearly all RFID "blocking" wallets were useless. That and they employ some immense collision detection -if you can throw a binbag full of chips past a reader and still manage to scan them all, I find it impossible to believe 2 cards stacked does _anything_ to help.

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Why not just buy pre-paid VISA cards [ed: and even if they do -- the damage will be limited] ? AFAIK they don't have RFID? I'd be more worried about my passport (if it had RFID).

As soon as my RFID passport arrived, it went into the microwave for a few seconds. No smoke, no discoloration - just a slightly raised outline.

And no more RFID.

But is it then, technically, still a valid passport?

Valid enough for human validation! (Although, I think it's technically illegal to deface a passport. But, at the same time, it's not technically 'defaced'...)

Edit: As a frequent (if reluctant) traveler, I've yet to encounter a necessity for RFID at passport control. (I simply avoid that particular queue.)

I've been stopped twice for not being obedient: once because I refused to step into a mm-wave scanner (after the controller refused to send me back through the metal detector after I removed my belt...), and another time for not staring into the hypnotic blinkenlights that were swirling around the cameras above everyone's heads in the queuing area.

Can you elaborate on the 'hypnotic' lights? I've never seen or heard of this.

I think it was UK Gatwick Airport, on the way to passport control. The passengers were shepherded into lines, and spaced at intervals above each line were ceiling-mounted cameras. Bright LEDs around the camera lens were flashing in rotational patterns - designed to instinctively draw attention, and hence make facial recognition easier.

Were there four lights? Or five?

I really can't recall. I wasn't looking up!

No, but the kind of person who writes things like that never leaves his basement anyway, so he doesn't need a valid passport.

New readers can actually enumerate RFID cards. I'm not sure if cards themselves need to support that explicitly or not.

It's very useful in big gates - like ski lift, where you're likely to have the pass and your wallet with extra cards.

Because RFID is a family of technologies operating at 4 different frequency bands and using 2 different coupling mechanisms, it is difficult to generalize. For the use case of ID cards, 13.56MHz and inductive coupling are the relevant characteristics. Anti-collision is pretty weak in most 13.56MHz transponders, and it is no better than it was 8 years ago.

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