Originally published December 1 2005
U.S. passports to carry electronic security chip
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Later this year, the U.S. State Department will begin issuing a new generation of passports bearing an electronic chip that holds biometric information.
E-passports will look much the same as today's machine-readable passports with the familiar gold-embossed blue cover.
But the e-passports will contain an electronic chip with uniquely encoded biometric information (a facial photograph), a coil, or antenna, if you will, embedded into the back cover.
The encoded chip will duplicate the information that's on the passport's data page -- digitized photo, name, birth date, place of birth, nationality, etc.
With today's thin technology, the chip, coil and metallic security shield will not add any detectable thickness to the cover.
When an immigration officer holds an e-passport over a reader, he or she will be able to view you, your passport's data page and the digital information embedded in the chip on a monitor to make certain the document has not been altered.
A government digital signature also verifies the correctness of the passport information.
The U.S. and 27 visa waiver countries -- mainly Western European nations along with Australia and Japan that reciprocally don't require visas of American citizens -- are in the vanguard moving into the electronic passport era.
The biggest problems have centered on privacy issues caused by the way the ICAO specs were presented, according to Neville Pattinson, director of business development, technology and government affairs for Axalto, an Austin, Texas-based technology firm developing an e-passport.
He said that in an environment such as an airport check-in counter, somebody with an antenna and receiver 30 feet away could intercept data transmitted by radio waves between a reader and passport.
As for the e-passport, Angela Aggeler, spokeswoman for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, said a pilot program is under way using a document with built in security, and additional security features are being considered that are similar to those developed by Axalto.
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