Originally Posted by
wesmills
In the US, when we are issued a passport with a RFID tag, the passport comes with a flier stating that even if the chip is unreadable, the passport's validity is not affected. I would imagine this applies to non-US passports, provided the machine-readable portion of the identity page is still readable. The chip is not "the passport" it is a part of the actual document that makes the document easier to process. What matters is the information on your passport, and that's not affected by the chip or lack thereof.
Exactly. This is actually a rule of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The information on the chip is just an additional feature.
I think since now more and more people get passports with RFID-Chips we will see more and more broken ones over the next years. It won't probably be long until a fellow Flyertalker will share its experience of being detained at the US border because the chip didn't work.
lWhat in this chip anyways ?
The chip consists of 16 Datagroups where Datagroup 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the most important. Datagroup 1 has the following information stored:
Document Type
Issuing State or Organization
Name (of Holder)
Document Number
Check Digit
Nationality
Date of Birth
Check Digit
Sex
Date of Expiry or Valid Until Date
Check Digit
Optional Data Field
Check Digit
Composite Check Digit
Datagroup 2 (Global interchange feature):
Encoded Face
Datagroup 3 (additional feature):
Encoded Fingerprints
Datagroup 4 (additional feature):
Encoded Eyes
Datagroup 5 to 16 has some additional information which are not that important.