posted on Mar, 23 2008 @ 07:08 PM
You have a Biometric Passport, which contains a Chip. Most Countries now issue Biometric Passports, I have 3 passports (Irish, British & Australian)
and all are Biometric. They have been around in some countries since 2005.
At the moment most countries only have your personal details and photo on the chip (the same info in the passport) but the plan is to eventually have
things like fingerprints added (this is no secret, and is the aim of the Biometric Passport). Germany from November last year started to add
fingerprints.
You can tell if a Passport is Biometric if it has this symbol on the front cover:
Biometric Symbol
(see the symbol on the bottom of the Passports)
The Chip is located in different parts of the passport, depending where your country places it, In my Irish passport it’s on the Photo Page in the
top right corner inside the plastic. On my Australian passport it’s in the very middle page of the passport, in my British passport it’s clearly
visible. Some it’s easy to see, some it’s not – I don’t know where on the US one it is.
Location of Chip in Australian Passports
Location of Chip in a British Passport
See, those are easy to see, but on the Irish one for example you have to tilt the photo page at an angle inot the light and you can see it, so maybe
the US one is similar to that, and thats why you can't find the chip?
Here is more info from Wikipedia about the Biometric Passport anyway.
Wikipedia Biometric Passports
Mikey
[edit on 23/3/2008 by Mikey84]