US e-Passport Insecurity

According to the Washington Times, the Government Printing Office has been outsourcing the creation of e-Passport covers, which contain the contactless smart card chip (a.k.a. RFID chip) and antenna, to companies in Europe and Thailand. Apparently the GPO did this due to cost concerns, and it’s paid handsomely: over $100 million in profits claims the Times, due to the huge mark-up. Passports used to cost $60 - now they cost $90, and the cost of using outsourcers is around $7.97 per passport for the GPO, who then marks them up for the State Department to $14.80. Quite a tidy profit.

What’s especially disturbing about this (besides the concern that the government is supposed to be a break-even operation that doesn’t make substantial profits off of its citizens), especially in light of the strict manufacturing processes outlined by the REAL-ID act looming for state IDs, is the fear that outsourcing the creation of one of the US government’s gold standard of documents to multiple foreign countries is rife with security holes. The Times reported at least one - apparently, within the U.S. the passports were shipped from the GPO to the State Department via FedEX, and only later was that upgraded to an armored car company. Just the shipping process alone (which the article gives no indication of how secure it is) from the Netherlands, to Thailand, and then to the U.S. leaves plenty of opportunity for both dumb mistakes and deliberate targeting. How secure are the facilities abroad? Do the workers undergo background checks? Etc, etc, etc.

Remember, this is from an administration who is threatening to tell states that refuse to comply with REAL-ID that their residents will not be able to board planes at airports with their state issued IDs because they will not be deemed sufficiently secure enough. Yet, the federally issued e-Passport, deemed to be incredibly secure due to the inclusion of RF technology and far more valuable than a state-issued driver’s license, is potentially vulnerable to being stolen in its most valuable form: as a blank book (printing apparently occurs here in the U.S.).

I must note that we have no reports yet of there having been any problems with this process, but this reported lack of control over the manufacturing process inspires little confidence.