WASHINGTON—American travelers have begun receiving a new RFID-equipped electronic passport in mid-August, according to an announcement from the U.S. Department of State.
Right now, the only people receiving the new passports, which are embedded with an RFID chip that contains full passport information, including the photo, are only going to people served by the Passport Agency in Aurora, Colo.
A State Department spokesperson told eWEEK that the department plans to issue tourist e-passports at all of its domestic passport agencies by the end of 2006.
According to spokesperson Justin Higgins, the State Department had two primary reasons for moving to digital passports.
“The first is security and the second is convenience of travel,” Higgins said.
“The Congress mandated that countries that are part of the visa waiver program have passports with integrated circuits that can store at least a digital image of the passport photograph for use with face recognition technology,” he said.
Higgins said that the new e-passports should make life a little easier for travelers.
“The electronic passport will facilitate travel by allowing automated identity verification, faster immigration inspections, and greater border protection and security,” he said.
Higgins also said that the new e-passport adds an important means of verifying that the information contained on the passport is accurate.
“The e-passport provides greater protection against data alteration than the current non-electronic passport by means of a digital signature,” Higgins said.
The new digital passports have been redesigned to reduce the chance of being hacked into, or of being accessed by unauthorized people.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Digital Passports Land in U.S.
