Biometric Passport Border Security and Holder Privacy Issues and Recommendations

Biometric documents as passports and identity cards are now available for use to US, European and non European citizen. The core technology in use in these documents is the Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology. Data stored in RFID tag can be remotely read and communication channel between tag reader and the document tag could be intercepted. Reading and intercepting the biometric data is a clear threat to nation border security and document holder privacy. In this paper we investigate the current technologies, we point out their drawbacks and we propose more satisfactory alternative solutions.