NTK -- Need to Know reports an incident at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference where the US State Department said that its new RFID passports could only be read from 10cm away. A few minutes after that claim, Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU turned up and read it from a meter away. State Department officials immediately said the passport will be encrypted. NTK wonder if al the bits will be scrambled, even the little signals that say, "Hey! I'm an American with a valuable passport! Kidnap me!"
Spy Blog -- "Contactless RFID Biometric Passports in the UK: Same risks as US RFID Passports"
