Your passport should need two keys, a public key so it can authenticate a message from 'the government' and a private key to sign an incoming (authenticated) message to send back. The government also has this private key and can this way always track your passport.
An outsider wouldn't be able to track you or copy your private key as it's never sent out by the chip, and no personal information can be stolen as it isn't stored in the chip.
Now I also don't like the idea of being tracked all the time by the government, but at airports, I really wouldn't mind, it's for my own security. So they could just make a switch on the passport to enable or disable the chip. It should then be compulsory to have it switched on at places that need to be 'secure'..
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I don't see why this is all a problem.
Your passport should need two keys, a public key so it can authenticate a message from 'the government' and a private key to sign an incoming (authenticated) message to send back. The government also has this private key and can this way always track your passport.
An outsider wouldn't be able to track you or copy your private key as it's never sent out by the chip, and no personal information can be stolen as it isn't stored in the chip.
Now I also don't like the idea of being tracked all the time by the government, but at airports, I really wouldn't mind, it's for my own security. So they could just make a switch on the passport to enable or disable the chip. It should then be compulsory to have it switched on at places that need to be 'secure'..