The majority of the 27 countries that take part in the
US Visa Waiver Programme have met the US requirement to introduce
biometric passports equipped with RFID (radio frequency
identification) chips.
Of the 27, which includes the UK, only Andorra, Brunei, and
Liechtenstein have failed to start issuing the passports by the 26
October deadline.
Citizens from those three countries using a passport issued
after this date will now have to apply for a visa to visit the
US.
UK citizens have been issued with biometric passports since this
March. Those with a passport issued without biometric chips can
still get into the US without a visa if they have a digital photo
and machine readable details in their passport.
UK citizens with passports issued before digital photos were
introduced can still get into the US without a visa with a stick-in
photo, providing they have a machine-readable passport.
The new biometric passports contain an RFID contact-less chip
with the passport holder's biographic information stored on it,
along with a biometric identifier, such as the digital photograph
of the holder.
The US wanted the biometric passports to help fight terrorism
and crime by making it more difficult to forge passports.
US Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff
said, “The department is committed to shutting down the ability of
terrorists and criminals to use false travel documents to move
freely through our borders. The upgrade to e-Passports is a
significant advance in preventing terrorists from using lost or
stolen passports to obtain entry into the US.”
The biometric passports carry an international e-Passport symbol
on the cover and are said to have security features which prevent
the unauthorised reading or ‘skimming’ of data stored on the
chip.
But some security experts and privacy advocates have expressed
fears that this data protection is not strong enough, and that
criminals may soon be able to hack into the chips, even wirelessly
from a distance, and steal the details.