IN THE last couple of months, a clutch of computer security experts have demonstrated just how easily the information stored in electronic passports can be cloned or manipulated without the owner’s knowledge.
The underlying problem is that the radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags laminated inside them are always turned on. That is, they are always ready to squirt out the data they contain on receipt of a radio signal. So the tag can be read surreptitiously at any time by anyone who passes close enough with a compatible reader.
“This is a very real problem,” says Philip Taysom, chief executive of Peratech in Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire, UK.…
