The Department of Homeland Security announced headway in testing and development of biometric technologies to prevent fraud and theft of international travel documents. An October deadline looms for a requirement that Visa waiver travelers produce e-Passports upon entering the United States, and DHS said Monday that initial testing has been successful.
Critics continue to raise security concerns since the government has not released specific information about the systems, but DHS maintains that the e-Passport system is safe.
"We are adopting biometric, electronically-based, and secure travel documents that are tamper resistant, yet provide a very convenient way to move back and forth across our borders," DHS Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson said through a prepared statement Tuesday. "We have now successfully completed e-Passport technology testing in a live environment. Working with visa waiver countries, we will begin to deploy these important security enhancements this year."
Visitors from three of 27 countries, with privileges for expedited access, took part in the initial testing at San Francisco International Airport. As part of the US-VISIT program, they allowed border protections officers to test e-Passports and e-Passport readers with Basic Access Control to test their new system. BAC is supposed to enhance document security while protecting travelers from "skimming," or unauthorized reading, of information.
e-Passports contain biographic information and a digital photograph on a contactless chip. DHS can read and authenticate the new passports and will begin issuing them to U.S. citizens this summer. Authorities reported that 1,938 e-Passports were successfully processed at one airport in three months.
Bruce Schneier, an internationally known security technologist and author, said during an interview Wednesday that contactless chips are inherently insecure and, for that reason, called them a "dumb feature."
"It doesn't address security entirely and the devil's in the details, and we don't know the details," he said. "You can't make a blanket assumption that it's good."
He compared the contact cards' security features to locks on doors to new homes.
"Who has a copy of the key," Schneier asked. "Is the door-lock installed properly?"
Those questions will not be answered until the government – or someone else – publishes more information about the security features, he said, adding that a simple contact chip, or smart card, would be safer.
"It does everything they want to do without causing all those problems," he said.
Travelers applying for visa waivers through the program can enter the United States for up to 90 days without obtaining a non-immigrant visa. About 15 million visa waiver travelers visit this country each year, according to DHS.
