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South Africa Rolls Out Biometric Passports
volume4 writes "The South African Department of Home Affairs has begun rolling out security enhanced passports to new applicants from this week. A facility in Pretoria which prints the new passports was officially opened last week by the minister of home affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. The new passports have an embedded RFID chip which stores the owner's biometric information, including personal details, a high-resolution colour photograph and fingerprint information."
The main reason for this rollout is that the UK recently rescinded the reciprocal visa arrangements for South Africans visiting the UK.
Previously, many SA citizens visited and did business in the UK and no visa was required - They could stay for up to 3 months.
In early Feb this year, the UK govt announced that visas would be required from 3 March onwards due to concerns about the amount of illegitimate SA passports in circulation.
This gave thousands of people who had already bought plane tickets only a few weeks to make the appointment, travel across the country and apply for a visa. If they were unable to do this due to time constraints of financial constraints, they lost the cost of their flights as the airlines pushed back and said that they had sold non-refundable tickets, so it was not their problem.
The SA government really had no choice but to implement these as the UK is a major business partner for many SA companies, and stemming this travel would have been very damaging. And elections are coming up.
Unfortunately, countries don't have the luxury of being able to focus on one thing at a time. The old passports were being forged wholesale, leading to public relations problems. TFA actually mentions that SA citizens will be required to get a visa to enter the UK due to high rates of passport fraud. We can't very well sit back and say 'first, lets get this HIV thing licked, then we'll try to pick up the pieces of our foreign relations'.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
The field is around anyway, whether there is a chip or not. It's not like the chip attracts the field or anything. If you're worried about the increase in the background EMF strength in general, that's perfectly reasonable, but blaming RFID is not so much.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
The article also mentions that there is a secure channel through which all the biometric data are transmitted in a single packet to make it harder to tamper with them.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
I can walk into a Home Affairs office, slip someone a wad of cash and get an ID book under the name Wile E Coyote. O
Right. But that's exactly the point. Its a step in the right direction. With biometerics you can't do that anymore once it becomes mandatory and everyone is bio'd. You need unique data. Also there is not much incentive for someone to make any meaningful cash out of selling the biological data (since they can only ever do it once anyway).
:)
on a side note: I quite honestly don't give a toss if someone has my DNA. My biological code should be opensource
Except that as you said, the chip is passive, and completely unpowered unless it is being scanned, because it gets its power from the scanner. And because of that, they can't transmit with more power than they are getting from the scanning field.
Which makes them entirely non-dangerous normally, and less dangerous than the field that scans them when they are being scanned.
I'd stop worrying, especially as the (official) scanners are so short range that you have to take your passport out of your pocket (and away from your genitals) for it to be read, so your genitals would never actually be exposed to the RFID chip's radio broadcast.
Except that as you said, the chip is passive, and completely unpowered unless it is being scanned, because it gets its power from the scanner. And because of that, they can't transmit with more power than they are getting from the scanning field.
Except that as you said, the chip is passive, and completely unpowered, so the scanner emits a signal enough to power up an integrated fucking circuit and make it transmit back. Microwave ovens should be closed for a reason.
Oh, you thought the chip itself was harmful?
I'd stop worrying, especially as the (official) scanners are so short range that you have to take your passport out of your pocket (and away from your genitals) for it to be read, so your genitals would never actually be (officially) exposed to the RFID chip's radio broadcast.
Fixed that for you.