Passport: Check; Microchip: check; Irony: Check!

[velvett]

Passport: Don't leave home without it

By Alfred Borcover
Special to the Tribune
Published April 9, 2006


"An American passport is still the golden ticket, a ticket to freedom and opportunity."

--Liza Monroy of New York in a Newsweek essay

There's no doubt that the 3 1/2- by 5-inch blue book with the Great Seal of the United States emblazoned on its cover in gold is the best piece of identification an American can carry. At this moment, 68.2 million U.S. citizens out of nearly 300 million possess valid passports.

As the summer travel season fast approaches, millions more Americans planning trips overseas are scurrying to one of 7,000 passport acceptance facilities--local post offices, many federal, state and probate courts, a number of county and municipal offices, and 14 passport agency offices (by appointment only--see below*) throughout the U.S.--to apply for a passport or to renew one about to expire

SNIP

Starting this summer all applicants will be issued new, state-of-the-art electronic passports, a State Department official said. The new passport, the same size as the old one, has redesigned interior pages and a small integrated circuit, or chip, embedded in the back cover. The chip stores the same data that appears on the data page as well as a biometric identifier--a digital image of the passport photograph and a digital signature to protect the stored data from alteration.

.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0604080337apr09,1,3662807.story?coll=chi-travel-hed



THOUGHTS???

 

[Lestat]

i need to get one of those!

 

[nycgirl]

Some medical institutions are starting to do that with Medical Records. All of your information is stored in a chip.

I assume the biometric identifier will help cease people from using stolen passports by slicing out the pictures and replacing it with their pics.

I guess I shouldn't wait until the last minute to renew my passport next year.

 

[velvett]

I guess I shouldn't wait until the last minute to renew my passport next year.

See, we really do think alike.... LOL

Medical Records
My father had been dealing with the beginings of that and at first I thought it was just because he was anti-technology but from what I understand - every action related to a patient has an electronic form and there can be no missing "fill ins". Which is in theory is good but what happens when people are tired and either enter the wrong info or enter any info just to get the job done.

The Clerical errors that happen on papper and can be reviewed fast enough to maybe catch might be even hard to catch.

Ah well...

Flip side my mother is bitching up a storm because it takes months for her to get her "e-passport" from Germany.