Here comes the biometrics/RFID passport! But have we ever discussed that before?

Ministry of foreign affairs announced that Taiwan is going to have the biometric passports combined with RFID chip this year and will be the 60^th nation to have it. Not only the minister of foreign affairs declared it may be easier to resist the fraud problems of the passport, but also win the possibility to have the visa upon arrival from several European and American countries. The ministry said the reason to have it is due to the international trend and the ICAO’s (International Civil Aviation Organization) suggestion. The related recognising facilities will be developed several years later in order to support the new sort of passport.

He also said, of course, the new biometric passport will not infringe the right to privacy because it will ‘only’ has facial recognise function and RFID function which will only work in few millimetres leads to the satisfaction of the safety requirements.

It sounds GREAT, isn’t it?

The minister and government is going to have your sensitive data which is as sensitive as your fingerprint (that caused the J.Y. Interpretation no. 603 said the collection and processing of the fingerprint data violates the constitution) without public discussions or any related report. UK also has the biometric passport but with sufficient information released on its website (http://www.ips.gov.uk/passport/about-biometric.asp), however, the Ma administration shows this information with few words on their website (http://www.epassport.com.tw/). Furthermore, the biometrics passport is NOT sort of international trend which was criticized by LSE related reports and admitted by the UK government. Last but not least, there are only 4 countries (Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia) set up the supporting facilities and only use for their own nations. The benefits and advantages claimed by foreign affairs minister will be run for more than 10 years. Thus, since the benefits will not probably demonstrate so fast (even not 100% for real), I could not figure out WHY the government that ignores the Human Rights runs for the biometric passport so eagerly?