U.S. moves closer to e-passports

(continued from previous page)

to drop to under a dime in a few years. The State Department is mum on the cost of all this new e-passport technology, but it?s been reported that the agency plans to pass the bill on to citizens by raising the price of passports. Get ready to shell out an additional $10 on top of the normal fees, which are $85 for a first adult passport and $55 to renew.

The face of modern technology
E-passport chips also have enough memory to store digital photos, which is where the facial recognition piece comes in. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security plan to install facial recognition systems at immigration checkpoints in airports and elsewhere in about a year, said Barry Kefauver, a former State Department official who now consults with the agency on the e-passport program. Facial recognition scanners will automatically compare a person?s face to the data about their face stored in the RFID chips, making sure they match, he said.

"The administration... wants to be able to identify people in crowds. It wants to surreptitiously pick out the Americans, and pick out the foreigners."

--Bruce Schneier, founder, Counterpane Internet Security

The State Department may eventually incorporate fingerprints and iris scan information for extra measure. But that's further off because it would require fingerprinting the general public, something that may not go down too well with people because of the criminal taint of being fingerprinted, Kefauver said.

But facial recognition technology is a relatively new and somewhat unreliable. The British government postponed testing biometric identification cards with 10,000 people earlier this year after it ran into glitches with its iris-scanning and facial recognition equipment.

In addition, privacy advocates are concerned that the chips, which can be read remotely through clothing and purses at a debatable distance, could subject passport holders to spying, theft and other unsavory activities. The American Civil Liberties

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