The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is planning to adopt "biometric passports" -- also known as "e-passports" -- as early as next year. These passports, which contain a chip with an individual's bio data, would facilitate identification.
Vice Minister Yang Tzu-pao (楊子葆) yesterday said the ministry's Bureau of Consular Affairs was preparing to phase in the new passport to replace the old one, but added that the project was still in the development stage.
Catching up
"For anti-terrorism purposes, many countries have adopted e-passports and if we don't want to lag too far behind, we'll need to develop one, too," Yang said yesterday at the foreign affairs committee.
"However, because of privacy issues and other technicalities, we are still studying the feasibility of such a project," he added.
As for implementation, Yang said the new passport could be introduced sometime next year at the earliest but that the ministry would take Taiwanese reactions into consideration and work with the executive branches.
Conditions
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Justin Chou (
He said, however, that the ministry would have to ensure that no personal information would be leaked and will also have to develop anti counterfeiting measures.
He added that the KMT would not take the amendment to the Passport Statute (
In response, MOFA spokesman David Wang (
Limits
"The chips embedded in the e-passports will not include a person's fingerprints or an iris scan. Only the passport holders' photo will be contained, and this will be for facial recognition," Wang said.
So far, 35 countries have adopted the e-passport. Using this type of passport would help combat counterfeiting, Wang added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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