Starting this week, the State of New York has begun to issue driver’s licenses with RFID chips embedded in them. For the moment, the one “enhancement” that the licenses offer is to allow anyone who has one to cross the border into Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and some other Caribbean islands without a U.S. passport. The present system apparently does not contain any personal information about you, merely a code that can be read by a border crossing guard that verifies you as a U.S. citizen. We are officially on the slippery slope to RealID now, but I guess we’ll just have to deal with the practical aspects first, namely keeping your RFID-equipped tracking devices “enhanced ID” from being swiped.
This company in Standish, Maine makes and sells a handsome wallet they call the “Rogue Wallet”, and they now offer a model that has built-in RFID shielding. I would expect that within a couple of years, pretty much every wallet maker in the world will be pumping out wallets with RFID shielding, but their wallet has a few other nifty features: it’s designed to go in your front pocket, which is a traditional deterrent from pickpocketers (not a big problem in this country, but travellers should know that pickpocketing is rampant in many other countries). It’s also significantly slimmer than a regular wallet, even when you load it up with a pile of plastic cards. That should help to avoid having to explain the bulge in your front pocket to everyone. Plus, for their non-shielded models they have a wide range of styles, including an animal-free version for the vegan crowd, and an alligator-skin version for the die-hard carnivore crowd. The RFID-shielded model is more expensive than their standard models, but not out of line for a nice wallet.
Washington, Vermont, Arizona, Michigan, Texas ands California all have some sort of program in the works to issue RFID-enabled driver’s licenses. Ironically enough in this context, Maine is one of the states that has refused to go along with RealID, so Mainers don’t need to rush right out and buy these wallets, unless they have other RFID-enhanced cards (several credit card companies are issuing RFID credit cards already). Whether it’s your driver’s license, your credit card, or even just one of those security cards you need to get in and out of an office building, the days of carting around a whole stack of RFID-enabled cards is here, so don’t dally on keeping them safe from would-be sniffers.
I’m really surprised that there isn’t more public concern about our “enhanced” license. I don’t plan to get one…at least yet. For now, I’ll continue to use my old style passport when I cross the border. When it expires in a few years, I’ll get stuck with an enhanced passport and then I’ll probably get the enhanced license and I’ll be hunting for one of these wallets.