A correspondent asks: "Can you get rid of the RFID chips in passports by microwaving it?"
While I do not condone the destruction of official documents, and I think it's easy to get a little bit too paranoid about these things, the answer is "Yes", but you do risk setting your passport on fire, and if I was an immigration control officer I'd be a bit suspicious of someone with a passport that smells of charcoal.
RFID chips are typically small, passive, short-range devices (approx 10 cms reading range) that power themselves from the energy in the incident radio wave. So a less intrusive method of guarding against random snooping - whether from the state or the criminal - is to just wrap your passport in tin foil. Please let me know of your experiences going through immigration control, as I could do with a laugh.
See here for more details on RFID chips, including active tags which can be read from several metres away. If you're determined to go down the route of excising them from all aspects fo your life, then you'll have to start thinking about microwaving your shoes, your clothes and your tyres.
One warning though - you will also need to adopt the official head gear of the conspiracy theorist: full designs available here.
