September 15, 2005
New Passport Technoloy raise privacy concerns
With growing concern over security and passport scams, the U.S government is planning to make drastic changes to its passport technology. Even as future plans include adopting new fraud preventing techniques like color shifting ink, micro-printing, and latent image lettering, the most talked about change that they are considering is installing the RFID chip in the back of the passport.
Though the U.S. passport service is avoiding the word RFID to prevent offending privacy advocates, the reality is that installing these 'contactless chips' as they call it will open easy and new opportunities for counterfeit experts to steal other people's identity. The chip lends itself to being 'skimmed' easily by any techno-savvy thief who knows how to read the data contained in the passport from a distance of even a few feet.
The U.S passport department is, however, confident of warding of such dangers as it says that the passport cannot be read unless it it held open. It also plans to strengthen the security of the passports by using basic access control technology that can resist 'skimming'. With international terrorism rising, passport security is one of the foremost concerns of the U.S government. Now it remains to be seen how well can they balance security needs with privacy concerns.businessedge.ca reports:
The most controversial change is a plan to embed a radio frequency I (RFID) chip in the back cover of U.S passports in the very near future. Of course, they won't actually be calling them RFID chips, because that's a huge flag to privacy advocates.
Read more:Passport changes threaten access to U.S.
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