San Francisco International Airport is the first in the nation set to accept new passports embedded with computer chips that contain a traveler's photo and data, federal officials announced Wednesday.
SFO, which federal officials said was a test site for the new passports, is one of 33 around the globe that will get the chip-reading machines, which are being put in place over the next few weeks to meet an Oct. 26 deadline mandated by Congress.
Starting on that date, 27 countries whose citizens don't need visas for short-term business and tourist travel to the United States will be required to issue passports that include the chips. The U.S. has already started to issue such passports, said Jarrod Agen, Department of Homeland Security spokesman.
The chip will hold a traveler's photo and the biographical information printed on their passport. It will also have the capability to hold digital fingerprints and iris scans, Agen said. Federal officials claim the new passports will make it tougher for people to travel to the United States using fake documents.
Anna Hinken, spokeswoman for the department's US-VISIT program, said 25 of those countries will meet the requirement. Hinken would not identify the countries that don't meet the requirement.
Foreign travelers who qualify for the visa waiver program and have older passports may need to get a visa under the new rules.
The list of visa waiver countries includes much of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Brunei. The 26 U.S. airports on the list -- including SFO and Los Angeles International Airport -- will handle almost all of the estimated 13 million travelers from those countries.
The list also includes airports in Canada, Ireland, Puerto Rico and Guam.
The e-passport program, part of a larger plan to secure the nation's air, land and sea ports, is being rolled out two years past its original deadline. U.S. officials needed the extra time to develop the technology and to get other countries to comply.
It has also faced critics who say the data on the chips, which broadcast their information to the passport readers by a radio signal, isn't properly secured and could be stolen by others while it is being transmitted.
Hinken said the department has set up a protocol to protect travelers' data that allows only the airport's scanners to access it. But it is not requiring that the data be encrypted outright.
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