U.S. to abandon biometric passport plans, for realz

Back in April the U.S. government started questioning the viability of their plan to use RFID chips to store biometric data in passports, which would also have required biometric passports from any visitors to the U.S. entering the country under the Visa Waiver program (which allows short-term visits without a visa). Now it appears the U.S. has finally admitted that the technology is unreliable, and countries affected by the Visa Waiver are scrapping their plans to comply with legislation that will likely be dropped. Trials in the UK last year identified a high level of failure in the registration and verification of iris, fingerprint and facial recognition among a pool of 10,000 British citizens. Privacy advocates in Ireland are equally concerned over false positives and the potential for abuse of the stored data. Previously, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had set a deadline of October 2005 for compliance, but US and European Commission officials have met to discuss accepting a secure digital photograph in lieu of the biometric passport requirements.

[nojetlag @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

If the US changes its foreign politics there is no need for such crap stuff. Stay in your country guys and nobody will come over and do harm to you.
Leave the US army in the US saves tons of money. The only ones who benefit from this stupid foreign politics are Bush's buddies at Halliburton and now in the security business.

[fdisk @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Well at least that was an on-topic comment, nojetlag. . .

[Jake T @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

It's a shame. I wouldn't want something insecure, but I always love to see technology being integratted into anything and everything.
Hopefully something like this will happen later when we have more secure technology.

[jimmy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

lol.. what?
Yeah, RFID pisses me off too... I hate stupid americans and their stupid RFID. They're all like "yeah iraqi, put this RFID chip in your brain and we'll scan you n stuff"

[PT @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

This is interesting. Here in the UK the reports suggested the US had changed the rules oh so slightly as we (UK) and a few other sovereign nations not yet occupied, weren't quite ready for biometric passports yet. So it actually turns out the daft US misconceived spy in the passport idea doesn't work after all. Mmmmmmm........ doesn't that sound somewhat familiar? They should investigate fully before they jump to conclusion and act upon false or misleading information. At least we the free won't have to carry these stupid passports into the US before being treated like a total criminal upon entering the land of the "free" :)

[Dan Schwartz @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Hopefully this will go away for good. I was uncomfortable with the concept of having to give over so much personal information, but willing to go along with the data collection in an effort to make passorts harder to fake.

What I was not willing to go along with (and what prompted me to renew my passport early) was the government's apparent lack of concern for our privacy and safety in simply desciding to use RFID because it's the "in" technology.

[shidoshi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

As somebody who has a girlfriend not from the US who makes trips here, this is fabulous news. I've been through US immigration / customs a few times since 9/11, and it was already a hellhole run by complete a**holes before all of this new passport stuff.

Locking down our country is NOT the solution, people. Treating every visitors that comes to our country like a criminal the minute they step off the place is no way to treat them, so thank god this is going away.

[Bollocks Mate @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Serves them right, the twats!

That's what they get for trying to take away people's identity-freedom!

Based purely on distrust of others, they simply did not want the computer to be hacked and their own "important" wrongfully identified....... shame...... I was hoping some machine would point out that Bush is a monkey, but oh well........

[b0mb0klat @ Dec 19th 2005 1:23AM]

Good, that's one thing less to worry about and it also means that the EU will also be dropping this fascisizing project! :D


And yeah, locking down won't do anything except make your lives sadder and more paranoiac ; get a government that truly represent the american people and the world will see that America=/=American.


Patriotism's for loosers and blind capitalism's for leaders, not for the masses.