Biometric passport
The legal driving force of biometric passports is the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, which states that
smart-card Identity cards may be used in lieu of
visas. That law also provides that foreigners who travel to the U.S., and want to enter the U.S. visa-free under the
Visa Waiver Program, must bear machine-readable passports which comply with international standards. If a foreign passport was issued on or after October 26, 2006, that passport must be a biometric passport.
The chip of a U.S. passport stores an image of the photograph of the passport holder, passport data, and personal data of the passport holder; and has capacity to store additional data.
[19] The capacity of the
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip is 64 kilobytes, which is large enough to store biometric identifiers, such as fingerprints and retina scans, in addition to an image of a photograph, passport data and personal data.
Data in a passport chip are scannable by readers, a capability which is intended to speed up immigration processing. A passport does not have to be plugged into a reader in order for data therein to be read. Like toll-road chips, data in passport chips can be read when passport chips are proximate to readers.
The passport cover contains a radio-frequency shield, so the cover must be opened for the data to be read.
According to the Department of State, the
Basic Access Control (BAC) security protocol prevents access to those data unless the printed information within the passport is also known or can be guessed.
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According to privacy advocates, the BAC and the shielded cover are ineffective when a passport is open, and that a passport may have to be opened for inspection in a public place such as a hotel, a bank, or an Internet cafe. An open passport is subject to illicit reading of chip data, such as by a government agent who is tracking a passport holder's movements or by a criminal who is intending identity theft.
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