South Africa Rolls Out Biometric Passports

volume4 writes "The South African Department of Home Affairs has begun rolling out security enhanced passports to new applicants from this week. A facility in Pretoria which prints the new passports was officially opened last week by the minister of home affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. The new passports have an embedded RFID chip which stores the owner's biometric information, including personal details, a high-resolution colour photograph and fingerprint information."

Corruption

[Kifoth]

South Africa's Department of Home Affairs, which issues the passports, is hands down the most corrupt and inept in the country.

The UK has just revoked South Africa's short term 'no visa' entry rights because of the sheer number of dodgy passports being issued by the DHA.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&set_id=1&art_id=nw20090224132638974C233056 [iol.co.za]

The problem is not forgery. It's corrupt officials. I fail to see how making the passports 'high tech' is going to stop a bent official from issuing one with phoney details anyway.

This is just (expensive) security theatre.

Re:Mixed emotions...

[krou]

Actually, the "terrorism" threat has more to do with the forgery of passports in SA, which will be used by terrorists abroad. It's been getting a lot easier in recent years to obtain South African passports through illicit means. The UK recently introduced new visa restrictions on South Africans because of this. This move is no doubt an attempt to try and alleviate these concerns, which of course it won't, because of the levels of corruption in the SA Department of Home Affairs.

Re:Corruption

[wamatt]

I fail to see how making the passports 'high tech' is going to stop a bent official from issuing one with phoney details anyway.

FTA: Siobhan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Department of Home Affairs, said that an online fingerprint verification system is used to confirm the identity of the applicant to cut down on the risk of identity fraud at the point of application. All the data is captured during the application, and a single data file is created and sent directly to the printers to limit the risk of internal fraud.

Re:Lots of countries have this

[TheThiefMaster]

<quote>Except that as you said, the chip is passive, and completely unpowered, so the scanner emits a signal enough to power up an integrated fucking circuit <b>and</b> make it transmit back. Microwave ovens should be closed for a reason.

Oh, you thought the chip itself was harmful?</quote>

Who mentioned microwaves? RFID isn't a microwave technology, it's a radio technology. Hence the frickin name.

A microwave oven is closed because a standing wave is required to get the power level needed to cook, not because a loose magnetron (aka microwave generator) is particularly harmful.

The complaints about RFID passports near genitals suggest that people think that the chips are harmful. I disagree.

The RFID chips need milliwatts of power (if not less), they are TINY after all. RFID readers need little enough power that they can be battery powered. See: vet's handheld animal id tag scanners. And THOSE are powerful enough to penetrate flesh. A scanner for a passport chip wouldn't need to be as powerful, so would most likely be even weaker.

Your car keys (if you have radio button ones) are more powerful than an ordinary RFID tag or reader. They can go through metal from tens of feet away, passive RFID tags aren't read from more than two feet and not through metal. I can't remember people worrying about the radio waves from them. Or how about Wii controllers? Or wireless keyboards and mice? Especially the keyboards, placed on your lap/genitals to use!

It's all bullcrap media scaring people about crap they know nothing about.