Passport microchip: Too open a book?

The technology, not yet in U.S. use, would confirm your identity for officials. But it would also offer up that data to ill-intentioned passersby.

The United States hasn't issued any microchip-equipped passports yet, but as the Department of State tests different prototypes, the international standards for the passports are under fire from privacy advocates who worry the technology won't protect travelers from identity thieves.

The American Civil Liberties union has raised alarms and even an executive at one of the companies developing a prototype for the State Department calls the international standards woefully inadequate.

The international standards for "electronic" passports were set by the U.N.-affiliated International Civil Aviation Organization, which has worked on standards for machine-readable passports since 1968.

On the latest passports, the agency has "taken a "keep it simple' approach, which, unfortunately, really disregards a basic privacy approach and leaves out the basic security methods we would have expected to have been incorporated for the security of the documents," said Neville Pattinson, an executive at Axalto North America, which is working on a prototype U.S. electronic passport.

As part of heightened security post-Sept. 11, all new U.S. passports issued by the end of 2005 are expected to have a chip containing the holders' name, birth date and issuing office, as well as a "biometric" identifier - a photo of the holders' face. The photo is the international standard for biometrics, but countries are free to add other biometrics, such as fingerprints, for greater accuracy.

The international passport standards call for "a very sophisticated smart card device," that uses a chip and an antenna embedded in the passports' covers, Pattinson said.

Unlike cheaper and dumber RFID tags, the passport chips would be microprocessors that could send one piece of information at a time in answer to queries from a machine reader. They could also be equipped with multiple layers of encryption for security.

The international standards spell out ways the passports could incorporate more protection from identity thieves, but they make those methods optional.

Under the standards, information on the chip could be picked up by someone who wires a briefcase with a reader, then swings it within inches of a passports, Pattinson said. Over a greater distance, an interloper could eavesdrop on border control devices reading the passports, he said.

One rudimentary way to protect electronic passports from identity thieves is to wrap them in tinfoil, which blocks radio waves. The International Civil Aviation Organization and State Department say they're looking at more organized methods.

The international standard "is obviously a baseline," said Angela Aggeler, spokesperson for the bureau of consular affairs at the State Department. "This is something we continue to develop and work on. (Privacy) is the thing that is driving a lot of our considerations."

Other countries are also making the switch to microchipped, biometric passports, at U.S. request. Under the Patriot Act, visitors from 27 countries whose citizens don't need visas to visit the United States will need electronic passports, too, by October.

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