{"id":549850,"date":"2006-08-15T15:44:37","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T15:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549850-e-passports-for-the-us.html"},"modified":"2006-08-15T15:44:37","modified_gmt":"2006-08-15T15:44:37","slug":"e-passports-for-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549850-e-passports-for-the-us.html","title":{"rendered":"‘E-passports’ for the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

The State Department said the new generation of electronic passports include biometric technology that "take security and travel facilitation to a new level". <\/font><\/p>\n

The passports have a contactless chip in the rear cover that contains the same data found on the inside page of the current documents, including name, date of birth, passport number and dates of issue and expiration. <\/font><\/p>\n

The chip, known as a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, also contains a digital image of the passport holder and could in future hold biometric details like fingerprints. <\/font><\/p>\n

Proponents say the passports make it more difficult to forge or alter the documents since all personal information on the chip can be matched against the printed portion of the booklet. <\/font><\/p>\n

But privacy groups have raised concerns that the e-passports are vulnerable to remote scanning which would allow pirates to copy the holder’s details and create bogus travel documents. Such fears were heightened earlier this month when a German computer security expert demonstrated at a conference in Las Vegas how to crack the RFID chip and clone the new passports. <\/font><\/p>\n

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack defended the new passports, which he said contained "overlapping security features" to foil fraudsters. The features include metallic "anti-skimming" material incorporated into the front cover and spine of the new passport to prevent the chip being skimmed, or read, when it is closed. <\/font><\/p>\n

A special encryption key is also needed to electronically read the chip and each device has a unique identification number which would facilitate tracking of any cloned or copied documents, the State Department said. <\/font><\/p>\n

The State Department’s Denver passport office was the first to begin manufacturing the new documents, with production planned to expand through the agency’s 17 facilities by mid-2007. <\/font><\/p>\n

It is expected to take some 10 years for all US passport-holders to have the new documents. <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US began issuing “e-passports” carrying data embedded in electronic chips, despite concerns the high-tech documents could be read remotely by hackers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}