United (national news) States Passports
No commentsBy Jonathan Parker
United States Sets Date for E-Passports
The U.S. State Division says all U.S. passports issued starting in October 2006 will contain RFID chips.
The U.S. Express Division issued its final rules today specifying its plans to concern electronic passports (e-passports) containing RFID tags. The division says it intends to begin its e-passport program in December. The first stage will be a pilot program in which e-passports will be issued to government employees utilizing official or diplomatic passports for government travel. This pilot, the division says, will permit field-testing prior towards the very first issuance towards the American traveling public, early next year. By October 2006, all U.S. passports, using the exception of a small number of emergency passports issued by U.S. embassies or consulates, will include RFID tags.
The final rule incorporates amendments resulting from comments to a proposed rule originally published in the Federal Register on Feb. 18. The State Department says it received a total of 2,335 comments concerning its proposal to introduce e-passports. The division categorized 98.5 percent from the feedback as negative, 1 percent as positive and 0.5 percent as neutral. Concerning issues raised by those comments, the department says 2,019 expressed security and/or privacy concerns; 171 raised basic objections to the use of the information chip and/or RFID; 85 expressed basic objections towards the use of electronic passports; 52 listed basic technology concerns; and 8 focused on religious problems. The feedback are obtainable for review at the travel.express.gov section from the department’s Web site.
The chip used in the e-passports will comply with the ISO 14443 RFID specification and contain the same information as a passport’s information page?the passport holder’s name, nationality, gender, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photo. The chip will also include the passport amount, concern date, expiration date and type of passport. The ISO 14443 specification permits chips to be study when an e-passport is placed within approximately 10 centimeters of an RFID interrogator (reader).
Of all objections the department received regarding its plans, the overwhelming majority expressed concern over the possible for skimming and/or eavesdropping. Skimming may be the act of creating an unauthorized connection with an RFID tag so that you can gain access to its data. Eavesdropping may be the interception from the electronic communication session between an RFID tag and an authorized reader.
To prevent skimming, the division will add shielding material to the passport’s front cover and spine. The material is supposed to make the e-passport’s RFID tag unreadable as long as its cover is closed or nearly closed. The department will also implement Basic Access Control (BAC), which functions as a Personal Identification Number (PIN) in the form of characters printed on the passport information page. Prior to a passport’s tag can be study, this PIN should be inputted into an RFID reader. The BAC also enables the encryption of any communication between the chip and interrogator.
To ensure that U.S. e-passports are interoperable with other nations’ systems, the document’s embedded RFID chip will comply with specifications developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The ICAO specification requires a minimum capacity of 32 kilobytes of memory for storing data on the chip, whereas the U.S. government has opted for a chip with 64 kilobytes of memory to allow for the potential storage of extra data or biometric indicators such as fingerprints or iris scans, sometime within the future. Before the division adds additional information or biometric identifier other than a digitized photograph, however, it says it will seek public comment through a new rule-making process.
A number of other nations have already begun issuing e-passports, including Sweden.
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