April 4, 2005
High-tech passports coming; complaints already in
The dark blue cover will look the same, but U.S. passports are getting a high-tech makeover this year, reports USA Today.
"Blue-jacketed tourist passports, as well as the maroon-and-black-covered ones used by diplomats and others on government business, are being redesigned and going electronic. The goal is to make it harder to copy or tamper with them, just as currency has been redesigned to fight counterfeiting.
Monday is the last day for the public to submit comments on the plan to the State Department. Among those who have complaints are privacy rights activists and some business travelers worried that the new passports will make Americans less safe abroad.
What's generating controversy is a computer chip that will be in a passport's back cover. It will contain all the information now printed on the first page of the passport, including name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, passport number and a digitized photo.
[...] Bill Scannell, who has a Web site called RFIDkills.com says a terrorist could use a high-powered machine to scan a cafe and determine how many Americans were inside."
According to Spy Blog via RFID Japan, "it should be remembered that the United Kingdom Passport Service is planning to issue very similar Biometric Passports, to the same International Civil Aviation Organisation standards for Machine Readable Travel Documents at almost the same time as the United States."
Related article:
-- US to slap tourists with RFID
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