Mebbe you need to look again:
Try [link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/30/burnham_rfid_evasions/|here]:
For over six months now Burnham, pursued doggedly by MP and ID card opponent Lynne Jones, has been peddling the bizarre conceit that RFID and 'contactless' or 'proximity' chips are entirely different beasts. So, in July, he confirmed that for the UK ID card to be used as a travel document in Europe, "the card will need to meet standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which require the card to be contactless".* Presuming the information will not be moving across the air gap between the card and the reader using, say, smell, it's pretty obvious how that works, isn't it?
The contactless chips that will be used in ID cards and passports are amazingly like RFID tags. Place an RFID tag in the vicinity of a reader, and the reader can read data from it. Place an ID card or a passport in the vicinity of a reader and... you get the idea. [emphasis added]
Sounds like Big Brother is a bit bigger than you realize....
jb4
"Every Repbulican who wants to defend Bush on [the expansion of Presidential powers], should be forced to say, 'I wouldn't hesitate to see President Hillary Rodham Clinton have the same authority'."
&mdash an unidentified letter writer to Newsweek on the expansion of executive powers under the Bush administration