By October 2006, the U.S. government will require nearly all of the passports it issues to include a computer chip containing the passport holder's personal information, according to regulations published this week.
Starting in early 2006, the U.S. Department of State will begin issuing passports with 64-kilobyte RFID (radio frequency identification) chips that will contain the name, nationality, gender, date of birth, and place of birth of the passport holder, as well as a digitized photograph of that person.
The chip's contents will match the data on the paper portion of the passport, improving passport security by making it more difficult for criminals to tamper with passports, backers say. U.S. government efforts to make passports harder to forge began in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
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