Japan Starts Issuing E-Passports with RFID Tags March 28, 2006
Just a week ago, the Japanese government began issuing the country’s first e-passports (electronic passports). These new five-year, 10-year and diplomatic passports now all come with RFID tags while older 35 million Japanese passports await to be placed with the RFID chips.
Within a year, the government expects to have already issued 3.5 million e-passports. In ten years, it expects to have all Japanese passports already placed with RFID tags.
To speed up the issuing of the e-passports, Japanese government is deploying e-passport printers in 60 of its passport offices (every prefecture has at least one passport office with at one printer) and in 184 overseas passport offices.
Albeit the e-passports with RFID tags have already been issued, the Japan’s Immigration Bureau has not yet announced when it will begin reading the RFID-embedded e-passports. However, according to sources, the office will make such announcements in the next few months.
RFID tags used in the e-passports are sourced from Toshiba and Sharp.
- Posted in : RFID News
- Author : RFID Editor
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