Citing inaccurate, or at the very least misinterpreted, issues such as a the lack of data protection and the ability for the data to be read from distances of 30 feet, the articles suggest a halt or redesign to the passport program.

The authors of both of the new articles suggest that contact chips should be used rather than contactless chips. This is ironic in that they are most certainly being fed their information by the very same privacy groups that in recent past have rallied against the use of contact chip cards for other security credentials (e.g. driver licenses).

Last month, an article in Business Week raised the dander of the industry through a series of misleading technical claims (see Business Week article grossly misrepresents contactless passports.

The industry continues to fall short in efforts to have their side of the story heard. The Smart Card Alliance has developed a very sound document that addresses the differences between contactless smart cards for credentialing and radio frequency technology for logistics applications (download it by clicking here). Unfortunately the CNN and PC World authors did not consult the document in the preparation of their stories.

I encourage you to take a look at the articles to see what the industry is up against and then be sure to read the Smart Card Alliance document to understand the technical truths and mistruths.

From CNN.com: Passport chips raise privacy concerns By Christine Boese, CNN Headline News http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/06/passports/

From PC World Magazine (Feb 2005): Passports Fail Early Privacy Tests Personal information stored in the passport’s chip is vulnerable to hacking By Andrew Brandt (consumerwatch@pcworld.com),senior associate editor for PC World http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118786,00.asp