August 09, 2005 | RFID Passports, Yet Again

Today's Wired News story has an update on the government's plans to speed border crossings and make passport fraud more difficult by adding RFID chips to the travel documents.

United Airlines pilots and crew are the flying guinea pigs in a test of controversial new passports equipped with remotely readable chips.

Approximately 300 United employees stationed on international flights received the new passports in mid-June as part of a three-month, three-country test of IDs equipped with RFID chips. The chips can be read at a distance at border crossings by special readers installed for the trial.

The test is intended to see how easily Australia, New Zealand and the United States can read other's e-passports and how durable the chips are under constant use.

The new chips are part of post-9/11 security efforts intended to curb passport fraud and speed up border crossings, according to Frank Moss, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for passport services.

"The new passport undercuts the market in lost and stolen travel documents, because if you steal one of these you are not going to do much with it," Moss said.

The 64-KB chips store a copy of the information from a passport's data page, including name, date of birth and a digitized version of the passport photo. To prevent counterfeiting or alterations, the chips are digitally signed.

The United States is requiring all 27 countries whose citizens do not need visas to visit to begin issuing e-passports by October 2006. The original deadline was October 2004, but wrangling over standards and privacy protections has delayed upgrades by many of those countries.

Stateside critics would like to derail the current U.S. effort -- they believe the unencrypted chips could endanger Americans. Because the chips can be read from several feet away, they could serve as a beacon to thieves and terrorists targeting Americans traveling abroad, critics say.

Link.

USA Today came out with its version of the story today, too.

And security expert Bruce Schneier approves since he says he has insider information that the State Department isn't just thinking about adding encryption, they are actually planning to do it.

Posted by Ryan Singel at August 9, 2005 12:25 PM

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