Date: September, 2006
Source: FIDIS
Title: "Budapest Declaration"
Author: FIDIS

Summary: the "Future of Identity in the Information Society" (FIDIS) issued in September 2006 its "Budapest Declaration" claiming that by failing to implement an appropriate security architecture, European governments have effectively forced citizens to adopt new international Machine Readable Travel Documents.  They claim that the new e-Passport dramatically decreases their security and privacy and increases risk of identity theft.  They claim that the current implementation of the European passport utilises technologies and standards that are poorly conceived for its purpose.

Our response: we do not agree that the e-Passport dramatically decreases security and privacy and increases risk of identity theft.  If anything, because stolen e-Passports cannot be altered, security is increased.  A stolen e-Passport can be used for identity theft (eg access to name and date of birth) but this is no different to the current situation with traditional passports.  We believe that the authors have misunderstood the access requirements for a passport (ie must be read at any border) and thus the purpose of the BAC and EAC.  We state that the basis for this faulty analysis is previously published papers on eavesdropping and cloning which we believe to be low levels of threat.

http://www.fidis.net/press-events/press-releases/budapest-declaration/