Oh (big) brother, where are you?

Germany's Infineon is the first company to announce a major contract to supply RFID chips that will be integrated in US passports. The chips will carry digital copies of the citizen's picture as well as the printed documentation in the passport. Infineon promises that more than "50 individual security mechanisms" are protecting the data saved on the chip.

Germany, Hong Kong, Norway and Sweden are also using Infineon's security chip for their electronic passport systems. The security chip, which stores the passport-holder's name, date of birth, issue date and picture, can be read electronically by a scanner.

Worldwide there are currently about 900 million passports, with an estimated 125 million being issued or exchanged every year, the company said.