The US CBP confirms implementing software to verify e-passports in June 2022, nearly 16 years after the US started issuing passports with RFID chips
until now. Story by @lilyhnewman https://www.wired.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The gap itself is old news: back in 2018, Sens. Wyden and McCaskill publicly called out CBP for running a decade without software to verify e-passport digital signatures, meaning the RFID chips in US passports went unchecked even as they were issued. What the Wired report adds is the endpoint — CBP confirms signature verification went live in June 2022, roughly 16 years after the chips first shipped.
The timing matters because CBP didn't wait for the chips: it spent those years building a facial recognition pipeline that by late 2022 was verifying roughly 85% of the 221K daily travelers entering the US, with DHS projecting 97% screening coverage of departures. Document authentication arriving after biometrics means the chip was never the load-bearing layer of border identity — the face was.
First-order effects
- Travelers entering the US now have the cryptographic signature on their e-passport chip actually checked at the border, closing the verification hole the 2018 Senate letter exposed.
Second-order effects
- With chips verified, CBP's facial recognition system — already deployed at 15 airports and credited with flagging 7K visa overstayers — sits on top of authenticated documents rather than substituting for them, strengthening the legal footing DHS cites when expanding biometric exit.
Third-order effects
- A verified digital identity layer is a precondition for the passport-free travel pilots Finland, Canada, and the US are running with 'digital travel credentials' — the same infrastructure CBP belatedly switched on is what a chip-less border would inherit.
The trend: Border identity is shifting from inspecting physical documents to layered digital credentials, with biometrics deployed ahead of — and now on top of — the document security that was supposed to come first.