This December, the State Department will start issuing RFID-tagged passports. The embedded tags will contain the person’s name, nationality, sex, birth date, place of birth, issuing office and a digital photograph. Government officials promise that this will increase accuracy and speed travelers through immigration procedures.

Typically RFID transponders do not blindly transmit information, but will respond only when scanned. Even so, some privacy advocates are concerned about long-range scanners. At this year’s Black Hat and Defcon computer security conferences, Kevin Mahaffey and members of his team from Flexilis.com were able to scan RFID tags from 50 feet away. To allay security concerns, two features will be added to thwart hackers : Anti-skimming material and basic access authentication.

The anti-skimming material will probably be metal foil that will block incoming scans, while basic access authentication will require entering a PIN code to access to RFID information.

The State Department’s press office was not available to provide further information on RFID passports.