Traveling outside of the U.S.A. is going high tech. The United States State Department is banking on RFID chips to make passports more secure and harder to counterfit.  RFID, which stands for (R)adio (F)requency (ID)entification, will broadcast the passport holder’s name, address and a digitized photo to a remote reader that would be something like the security scanners by the exit doors at department or electronics stores and the “Fast Track” pre-pay toll system..

The danger with this type on technology as it means to be implemented is that your information can be read by the good guys as well as the bad. Since the passport does not need to be in direct contact with the reader, anyone who has the reader technology can get your information tha is being broadcast. Privacy experts and civil liberty organizations are in an uproar over the lack of security involved with the new passports

State Department employees and Diplomats are going to have the technology in their Passports by January 2005, the rest of American citizens applying for new passports will get theirs this spring, and other countries are required to follow suit.

So, are you going to be getting one of the new passports soon?

- norbtek.info 11-15-04