Originally Posted by
joshwex90
Until 2012, Israel didn't issue biometric passports. They tried changing that many times, but privacy groups and such have made a strong push against them.
Finally, they passed a law, and part of it was a "trial," allowing people to choose either biometric or "regular." (This is the current system.) For a regular passport, you bring in your own passport pictures. For biometric, they biometrically photograph you and use your fingerprint (index finger of each hand). With the biometric, you can use automated kiosks in TLV instead of waiting on line to speak to an agent. They will continue to honor "regular" passports through validity, and we'll see this year whether or not they end the trial and mandate biometric passports across the board.
But many countries don't use biometric or only recently started. I believe Canada started enforcing only in 2013
I know US law REQUIRES a biometric passport to get in under the Visa Waiver Program. Canada didn't have to comply, because their visa-free entry is under a different treaty or something.
Also, while Schengen countries require fingerprints in biometric passports (which I'll not are stored under Extended Access Control and thus NOT accessible to other countries, thus, other countries will still store their own copies of your fingerprints), most other countries do NOT require fingerprints, so that shouldn't have stopped Israel... they could have not done that step.
Finally, what the heck is "biometric photography" of someone? I have three biometric passports (citizen of three countries) - they're all made from a normal, old fashioned, printed passport photo. Nothing special at all.