SA Passports become hi-tech

[zesto]

SA Passports become hi-tech

Secure, biometric-based South African passports are available from today, says the Department of Home Affairs.
The new passports are fitted with an RFID chip that contains critical information, much like a smart card.

Nice, but just a tad bit late after the Brit visa saga..

 

[Eh!]

I renewed my passport 2 weeks ago. Will collect it in about 6 weeks so will it have this feature?

 

[TonyHawk]

We don't need chips in the books... we must put it in their heads... maybe they will get some freaking sense for a change

 

[bwana]

Something about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted springs to mind.

 

[Milano]

Does this mean Nigerians will have to pay higher bribes?

 

[ic]

Does this mean Nigerians will have to pay higher bribes?

Nope, Nigerians will get a bulk discount when ordering their new RFID SA passports.

 

[Bukabi]

Nice, but just a tad bit late after the Brit visa saga..

The problem wasn't in the security features of the passport, but the flawed processes at the goverment department issuing it. I’m afraid, the latter hasn’t been fixed just yet.

 

[knobshine]

damn it, now i need to get a tinfoil passport holder so the lolzords can't track me.

 

[ToxicBunny]

hi-tech?... nah sorry... this doesn't change anything about how easy it is to get a fake passport so that would be a fail for Home Affairs then.

 

[NameOfBeast]

damn it, now i need to get a tinfoil passport holder so the lolzords can't track me.

but they can still track your fillings....

 

[Flanders]

We don't need chips in the books... we must put it in their heads... maybe they will get some freaking sense for a change

LoL...shouldn't cost too much to implement this. They have more than enough chips on their shoulders to cater to everyone in need of a passport!

 

[Fudzy]

What other countries use this system, both in the actual passports and passport control?

 

[PeterCH]

What other countries use this system, both in the actual passports and passport control?

Japanese passports have them - I think so have US and British, no?

 

[km2]

Japanese passports have them - I think so have US and British, no?

From the EU passports I've seen, they all have them too.

Looks like the entire "first world" has them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport .

 

[t123]

The problem wasn't in the security features of the passport, but the flawed processes at the goverment department issuing it. I’m afraid, the latter hasn’t been fixed just yet.

Exactly. Before the criminals could just put their details straight into a blank passport or bribe someone at home affairs. Now the passport is "secure", so they bribe someone at home affairs for a fake ID and use that to get a real passport. Now you can't even tell the fakes apart, making it even more worthless.

 

[Nod]

I hope it is more "high tech" than the British passports, as they had been hacked already.
Source: The Register

The 'fraud-proof' e-passport can be copied and altered, a Dutch security researcher has demonstrated. In tests conducted for the Times, Jeroen van Beek of the University of Amsterdam changed the chip data in a normal UK e-passport to contain a picture of Osama bin Laden. The paper also reports that van Beek has contrived to have a passport in the name of Elvis Presley accepted by a public e-reader in a Dutch town hall.

Van Beek's work builds on earlier demonstrations which showed how a passport chip could be cloned, and subsequently how this could be done without even taking it out of the delivery envelope. Such exploits could be of some use to passport fraudsters - for example a copied chip could be palmed at an unattended reader or a complete copy of a passport that hasn't even been stolen could be used so long as the bearer resembled the original holder.

 

[t123]

The US passport was also hacked. Hopefully the DHA ran this google search before they started making them, probably not though IIRC the original design allowed any RFID reader access to the data without any sort of authentication. So anyone with a reader could steal all your passport data. The newer version requires some authorization key, which is something like the passport number. So to read the RFID data, they open your passport, scan the machine readable zone which gives the reader the key to get the RFID data. Hopefully the SA one has this, so at least they can't steal your passport details, which probably has all the handy information like DOB, address, ID they need to open a bank account in your name.

The RDID chip is probably still cloneable, but you'd need to get hold of a blank passport first and somehow do all the fancy engraving and what not, which is probably not worth the effort. May as well make a useful passport like an EU or US one instead for all that effort.

 

[knobshine]

but they can still track your fillings....

I know! That's why I have my tinfoil balaclava

 

[OhGats]

Hi-tech passports with low-tech home affairs.. what a great combo.