One of my favorite web sites is cryptome.org, which publish sensitive corporate and government documents,in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology. I often browse inside the site,but without a internal search engine it is very hard to find and appreciate all the documents and photos available . Then I have decided to write a small firefox search engine plugin that improve the search.

You can download and install the plugin here:
www.cryptolife.org/code/cryptome/

I hope that this small addon will be helpful.

The passport is a document as others, we consider it inoffensive ,and when we are abroard, it gives to us a common sense of security and confidence. We never think that it would be used against ourselves, because we assume that it is a paper document issued by our government in order to give us protection and freedom of movement when we travel in a foreigner country. Before the madness of post 9/11, our passports were printed with a statement of nationality, first name, surname and other anagraphic information about the holder. But when the psychosis started with the demand of for more security and control; companies and governments showed a great interest in security measures such biometrics and rfid chips. On one hand, people worried more about possible terrorist attacks, and on the other hand, about the way in which a master plan was being drawn up to extend the power of corporations and governments to control and track consumers and citizens in daily life. This security mongering campaign has worked and succeeded so far, and so well that people accept rfid and biometrics without asking themselves the possible implication of such privacy invasion.

A few weeks ago I received the new biometric British passport with an integrated rfid chip and , as soon as I have opened the package , I had a strange feeling. Then I decided to build a hardware firewall for my new e-Passport. I’m not so worried that my personal data is stored in the chip embedded in the e-Passport, but I’m scary that this information could be read remotely and re-used without my knowledge, and my every movement can be tracked. Suck attack can be performed with a common rfid reader available on ebay and various opensource software. The more that I have the passport and more I wanted to do something. So, I went into the kitchen and with a roll of aluminium foil I’ve made a kind of wallet that should stop or reduce the chip emissions . I’m not sure if this is enough, but it is a good starting point.