April 18, 2008

US Outsources Passport Manufacturing to Thailand














GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government's documents, from federal agency reports to the president's massive budget books that outline every penny of annual federal spending. Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.

When the government moved a few years ago to a new electronic passport designed to foil counterfeiting, GPO led the work of contracting with vendors to install the technology.

Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.

According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

Mr. Somerset, the GPO spokesman, said foreign suppliers were picked because "no domestic company produced those parts" when the e-passport production began a few years ago.

After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.

The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.

The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.

Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America's e-passports.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see where they produce the RFID chips that they will put into ours and Canadas enhanced drivers licenses (EDLs):

"Washington is the first state to issue the new enhanced driver's license (EDL). New York, Vermont and Arizona are working on EDLs, and other border states are expected to do likewise. Canadian provinces also are working on their own EDLs, with British Columbia leading the way, to be followed by Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec, Yukon and the Atlantic provinces.

Both the EDL and the passport card will have security features to prevent counterfeiting and will include Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to help speed the entry process at border crossings."

http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/new_border_crossing_rules_080418.html

The RFID in these cards will be readable for at least 20 feet, and is supposed to "harmonize" the enhanced driver's license standards of the two countries. Mexico may get these as well if they join AAMVA.