In my passport there is a fingerprint on the chip. Not easy to get rid of that.
Yeah, I get that. But my original question was something along the lines of: does it actually matter? You can put any data you want on that chip, but if there are no standards for encoding, presenting, and comparing that data, itâs a waste of space. That chip might as well be a write-only memory.
Iâve done a bit of my own reading on the subject since the original question and in fact there do seem to be some published standards, but compliance seems to be entirely voluntary. There is no organisation that monitors global compliance with those standards and takes individual countries to task if theyâre not holding up their end.
Reading the article about the Russians, I get the distinct impression this is all a big game of hide-and-seek for public schoolboys. Holes in the system are deliberately left open so that they can all carry on playing spy games, while the average man in the street gets his junk fondled in the name of âsecurityâ. In reality, border control is a shambles.
Another thought that occurs to me is that it doesnât even matter who you are when you cross a border. It only matters if youâre out to do harm, and in that case it still doesnât matter who you are, as such - all that matters is that the authorities can monitor the actions of a certain identifiable body thatâs under suspicion, and a passport is a pretty useless artifact for achieving that.
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People often get the same treatment even when it is a coincidence. Ask the parents of any infant on a no fly list. 
Definitely. These are not holes. Theyâre deliberate schemes.