Poking the government with a stick
I've been emailing the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who are in charge of passport regulations, asking some extremely pointed questions of the sort governments don't like being asked.
Specifically, given that the new wireless RFID-chipped ePassports have been proven (with references) to be spectacularly less secure than the older non-digital kind, and given that the Australian Privacy Act 1988 requires the Department to (quoting their website) "take all reasonable steps to protect [citizens'] information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure", doesn't this mean they have to pull all chipped passports and replace them with unchipped ones, or at least stop issuing passports with known security problems?
It doesn't help their case that there are no international standards for digital information on biometric passports, so the only places a chipped Australian passport can be (legally) read is at an Australian [air]port or, presumably, embassies and whatnot. All other international ports of call are not going to be reading that information, so why have it?
Specifically, given that the new wireless RFID-chipped ePassports have been proven (with references) to be spectacularly less secure than the older non-digital kind, and given that the Australian Privacy Act 1988 requires the Department to (quoting their website) "take all reasonable steps to protect [citizens'] information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure", doesn't this mean they have to pull all chipped passports and replace them with unchipped ones, or at least stop issuing passports with known security problems?
It doesn't help their case that there are no international standards for digital information on biometric passports, so the only places a chipped Australian passport can be (legally) read is at an Australian [air]port or, presumably, embassies and whatnot. All other international ports of call are not going to be reading that information, so why have it?