University of Birmingham - Passport to oblivion

Computer scientists claim to have found a flaw in e-passports that makes it possible to track people carrying them - potentially assisting murderers. Researchers at the University of Birmingham identified a fault in the design of the radio-frequency identification tags incorporated into documents from a range of countries. The scientists could detect the passport carried by an individual at a distance of a few metres. Tom Chothia, researcher at the Birmingham School of Computer Science, said: "In a worst-case scenario, this flaw would make it possible to build a bomb that would explode on detection of a particular passport, killing the bearer."