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| Subject: U.S. Moves To Add Chips To Passports The State Department says it aims to begin issuing passports with chips at one facility by Oct. 26, 2004. | |
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Author: which are primarily used today to allow cardholders to pass through transit turnstiles or enter buildings by waving cards near readers( 2003-07-09 ). |
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Date Posted: Thursday, July 10, 12:44:25pm U.S. Moves To Add Chips To Passports In a first step toward adding chips to U.S. passports, the U.S. State Department has asked vendors to comment by July 28 on a plan to add contactless smart card chips to passport books. The document, obtained by Thomson Media’s Card Technology magazine, says the U.S. government will follow standards set down in May by the International Civil Aviation Organization for adding chips to travel documents to store biometric data, such as finger or iris scans, that can identify travelers. ICAO, which sets travel document standards for 188 member nations, specified that biometric data would be stored in contactless smart card chips, which are primarily used today to allow cardholders to pass through transit turnstiles or enter buildings by waving cards near readers. The State Department says it aims to begin issuing passports with chips at one facility by Oct. 26, 2004. That is the deadline set by Congress for the 27 countries whose citizens can enter the United States without visas to begin issuing passports carrying biometric data. By 2006, the State Department says it expects to issue all passports with chips. There are 55 million U.S. passports in circulation, with 7 million issued each year. But the State Department says that number could increase to 12 million or higher per year due to unspecified "policy options under consideration that relate to the U.S. passport." The State Department says in the document that its initiative is a result of a law passed by the U.S. Congress last year requiring major U.S. trading partners to begin issuing machine-readable passports carrying biometric data by Oct. 26, 2004. There are 27 nations whose citizens can enter the United States without visas. Insiders had predicted the United States itself would have to begin issuing passports carrying biometric data to comply with reciprocity clauses in such visa-waiver agreements. The State Department document says it plans to use chips with at least 64 kilobytes of programmable memory, double the 32K memory that ICAO had specified as a minimum. State Department says the chip will hold at least one full facial image of the passport-holder, meeting the ICAO requirement for using facial recognition technology as the biometric that can be read by all countries. The State Department did not say what it would use the remaining memory for. However, U.S. officials have said in the past they would also like to use fingerprint and possibly iris technology, which are more accurate than facial recognition when checking a large database of individuals on a government watch list, which may include suspected criminals or terrorists. The chip will be embedded in the inside back cover of the passport, the State Department says. ( 2003-07-09 ) [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |