I plan to get my passport renewed prior to leaving for Africa in November. The new passport will be a biometric passport. Has anyone experienced any problems with this in countries where such a thing has not yet been implemented? I mean, has anyone encountered a policeman holding up the biometric passport asking "and what the hell do you call this?"?

Did a search on the hubb for "biometric passport" and it only returned one thread where it is mentioned in passing. So I am guessing (hoping) it isn't an issue at all. Still, it would be nice to hear from a few people who have actually used a biometric passport in, shall we say, less than high tech countries.

The new-style passports are being issued by numerous countries to provide extra safeguards for assuring the legitimacy of the document. All it entails is an embedded computer chip in a slightly fatter page usually in the centre of the passport. The chip can be read by a simple scanner which shows the photo and basic biodata of the true holder of the passport (although no more information than normally appears on a passport). You cannot tell the chip is there and border officials will either already know of the passport-style or will not see the chip.

Incidentally, it is diplomatic convention that new passport styles be distributed to all countries before they are issued. Countries will often ask for extra copies to distribute to various authorities to make sure everyone is across the new style. The new passports are marked with a special universal symbol (a circle overlaying two rectangles) which all border officials will recognise once these things become common. Australia has had the system for about two years and most Euros the same. My guess would be there are several million of these passports now in circulation.

These days ALL countries are very cognisant of the need to control access across their borders, and I would be very surprised if the new biometric passports were a surprise to any border official. The common form of passport forgery in the past was to get a western-country passport of someone from a with an ethnically similar-sounding name and change the photo. This will now be very difficult.

cheers
Brett

Thanks for the reply Brett. Seems I was fretting over a "problem" that doesn't exist. I was hoping that was the case, but it was nice to have it confirmed.