Or you could just hit the chip with a hammer (accidentally) and skip carrying one more thing when you travel.
One could pound on it repeatedly. I still wanted a cover and this one cost the same as the others. It is black and reminds me of the cover of my favorite album.
Whatever you do, don’t do that. A damaged passport is not a valid passport, you can be denied entry into a country based on your passport not working properly, you can be detained under suspicion of forging a passport, and deliberately mutilating a passport is a federal crime in the US. Most passports these days are electronic, and an electronic passport that’s not working will be treated with a lot of suspicion.
Not only that, but the electronic passports are used in check-in kiosks, so you lose that convenience, and both the gate agents and ticket agents use it quite extensively, and you’ll both hold up other travelers and possibly incur troubles getting checked in to a flight if you don’t have it. (They may deny you, you may have to get special consideration to get all sorts of stuff done manually; which if you’re running late means you can miss your flight).
That doesn’t sound like much of a selling point to me.
Dunno, the first time that guns come out I would find myself both quite shot and quite dead.
Well sure, there’s always a chance of that, but when you’re 4 hours into long-haul cattle-class flight it’ll start to look like a much more pleasant alternative.
You should never ever intentionally damage government property. However, your fears of being denied entry or holding up other travelers is unsupported conjecture.
From http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/FAQs.html
"What will happen if my electronic passport chip stops working?
The chip in the passport is just one of the many security features of the passport. If the chip fails, the passport remains a valid travel document until its expiration date. You will continue to be processed by the port-of-entry officer as if you had a passport without a chip."
I don’t even let my government have property!
It’s kind of like, “this rock keeps away tigers.”
Reason! Sanity! Truth and Fact! Thank you!
Except, each of these statements is false.
Purposefully damaging your passport IS a crime, namely 18 U.S. Code § 1543. It can earn you up to 10 years in the Graybar Hotel. That jumps up to 20 years if they can attach it to drug smuggling.
[quote=“art_carnage, post:13, topic:46684”]
Purposefully damaging your passport IS a crime, namely 18 U.S. Code § 1543. It can earn you up to 10 years in the Graybar Hotel. That jumps up to 20 years if they can attach it to drug smuggling.
[/quote]Also, if you murder someone while you’re damaging your passport and smuggling drugs, this jumps to 35 years to Life.
in my youth, i used a home-made foil-lined pouch to routinely defeat RFIDs. it always worked. the only time I got busted for shoplifting was when an employee saw me, the electronic gates never went off.
I simply needed a passport wallet and it was on the rack at about the same price as non-RFID wallets.<
That’s some recommendation!
I don’t know how it happened. Maybe when I slammed my coat in the door? My preference is to travel light, but some people prefer to carry a lot of tools.
Sniff the Glove? I love that one too!
Technically most anti-shoplifting electronic tags are not RFIDs since they don’t have ID codes. But they rely on radio waves just the same so foil foils them.
Alternate solution: become a Canadian citizen. Our passports have RFID-blocking material built into the covers. The stuff works; I tested mine. The RFID chip can only be read with the passport open.
Bonus: you get to benefit from our civilized attitudes about health care.
