[LINK] US Passport RFID problem

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Kim,

Kim Davies wrote:

>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.
>  
>
The ISO 14443 spec is using inductive coupling - in other words, 
near-field coupling. The spec is designed for cards to be held very near 
the scanner. I'm with Geoffrey in being sceptical about the claim that 
ISO 14443 cards could be read at a distance; only if the experiment were 
repeated, which I haven't yet seen, would I believe it.

I note that in its most recent announcement, the US government specified 
ISO 14443 as one of the two supporting standards (the other is ISO 7816 
- Geoffrey, can you give any references?).

RC

>kim
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