Trinidad Introduces Machine Readable Passports

Well, my country is once again trying [profusely] to keep up to speed with technology.

"The Immigration Division of the Ministry of National Security in Trinidad and Tobago will be implementing on January 24, 2007 a new Machine Readable Passport and Integrated Border Management System."

I saw this in an advertisement in the local paper; released by the Ministry of National Security [who did a good job at hiding this information deep within their website - at least it's built with mambo].

I was not sure of what technology they are using; At first i thought it was barcode or RFID concepts [see also: RFID tricks]. I know a while back the US wanted to release RFID passports, but there was a big controversy on privacy. I think some countries actually use them [or so i read in the cover story of a Singapore magazine].

Anyway, i did some digging into exactly what MRP was; and at Travel.State.Gov they gave a definition. Basically MRP is just a simple, stupid line of data: now that takes all the RFID fun out of it.

:(