In message , at 14:40:21 on Fri, 19 Mar
2010, d remarked:

At any of the London Airports IME it is now very rare to queue for less than
20 minutes at immigration, though they are introducing machines which let
you avoid this queue if you have a "chip"" passport.

Ah yes , arn't they wonderful? All your details stored on it
unencrypted which
can be read from a few metres away with the right machine.

All your details - please list them. Unencrypted - according to who. A

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport

"The passport's critical information is both printed on the data page
of the passport and stored in the chip."

So nothing "extra". The data concerned is required at check-in by
numerous foreign hotels, so is in effect public information.

"Note that in some early biometric passports BAC wasn't used at all,
allowing attacker to read the chip's content without providing a key"

"Some early..." (Belgian ones issued before 2006, if you follow up the
reference).

So it looks like now they use encryption but according to the rest of the
document its still hardly secure. Look at the number of attacks listed.

few metres - only with massive aerials.

BS. RFID can be read from a few metres away as long as you can direct
enough power at the chip to power it up.

Which needs a large (directional) aerial.

--
Roland Perry