August 18, 2004
RFID in Biometric Passports
Balancing privacy with security is always tricky business. Enter the RFID passport, which has caused heads to turn at CASPIAN. They argue that biometric passports containing an RFID chip could aid governments in tracking their citizens going about their personal business, or worse yet, the private information could land in the wrong hands. But in today's world of terrorist threats, many countries around the globe are seeing the use of RFID on passports as a necessary upgrade of important paper documents. Most likely, each RFID chip would contain a digital image of the citizen's face, which would then be compared to a facial scan taken at the airport. Limiting human inspection of the documents would help to lessen the amount of errors made.
According to CNET News.com:
The first country to take the plunge will likely be Belgium, which plans to conduct an e-passport trial later this year, with possible real-world implementation by next year. The U.K. Passport Office recently announced that it is looking for volunteers to help test the recording and verification of facial recognition, iris and fingerprint biometrics. And New Zealand and Canada are also actively looking into conducting trials.
Read more: E-passports to put new face on old documents
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