Efforts by British govt. to have more secured passports that increased the travel document costs by 60 % in almost a year received a major setback.
Efforts by British govt. to have more secured passports that increased the travel document costs by 60 % in almost a year received a major setback with arrival of 100-pound microchip readers, which can effortlessly clone biometric passports.
The disclosure comes as a big embarrassment for British Home Office, which increased the price of new passport to US$ 125 (GBP 66) for placing a secure biometric tag on passports.
However now, NO2ID campaign that had expressed concerns over US$ 9.48 Billion (GBP 5 Billion) ID cards project has found a simple chip reader which can be brought from Internet in just US$ 181 (GBP 95.73) & can clone passport information, including photograph of the passport holder.
Nick Clegg, home affair representative for Liberal Democrat said that 3 Million people in UK possess such passports, which have exposed them to being victimized of increasing identity thefts. An urgent redesign is required for these biometric passports to replace them with the current ones.
The govt. planned to launch biometric passports following the demand of US authorities to secure travel documents - in wake of 9/11 attacks.
However, Home Office defended by saying that cloning of chip does not matter. The information present in passports can't be altered; the photograph will still remain the same so the cloned passport will not be of any use to anyone who is looking far fraudulent use of this technique, said a Home Office representative.
The representative further added, other than photograph, the impersonator wouldn't gain any information that he didn't already have, so the whole technique is utterly pointless.
"Though the Home Office has brushed off any security issues with the cloning, it can not be overlooked and should be seen as a beginning. If someone can make exact clones of biometric passports, chances are high that altered clones will soon be seen in near future", said an IT security expert at RNCOS.
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