Yet another nail in the coffin of privacy

The State Department downplays fears while a wag jokes that paranoids will turn their tin foil beanies into passport wrappers to keep out the snoops according to this report: WorldNetDaily: Are new passports identity-theft risk?

According to the story there is really no need to worry. "An engineer and RFID expert with Intel claims there is little danger of unauthorized people reading the new passports. Roy Want told the newssite: 'It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance,' saying a person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves." So hard to read at a distance that retailers think the technology can soon move from inventory control to automated checkout, or did I misread those stories about Wal-Marts RFID initiative?