[LINK] US Passport RFID problem

[Kim Davies]

Quoting Geoffrey Ramadan on Monday November 07, 2005:
| 
| >But the State Department's contention that they need an RFID chip, that
| >smartcard-like contact chips won't work, is much less convincing. Even 
| >with
| >all this security, RFID should be the design choice of last resort.
| 
| Why?
| 
| The ultimate aim is to ensure that everyone can be quickly identified 
| and authenticated efficiently. I don't know how you can do this without 
| automation.

The point is - what do you gain by choosing RFID over contact-based
exchange in this scenario? Even with RFID the passport is still going to
be handled, swiped and placed on a scanner by the customs official - so
the only apparent difference in using RFID to correlate the printed data
is to allow it to be additionally read from a distance.

kim