What Makes a Passport Biometric?
A biometric passport is an ordinary passport with a contactless chip in the cover or data page. The chip holds two things: a copy of the printed details and a digital facial image, signed by the issuing country so a border reader can confirm nothing has been altered. The photograph is the biometric.
Fingerprints are collected by some countries and not by others. Almost every public concern about e-passports comes from assuming the chip does more than it does. It does not track location, it cannot be read from across a room, and it holds no travel history — but a document that never says so leaves the assumption in place. What stays out of the published version is security detail: the key hierarchy, the access protocols, and the anti-cloning measures are the parts an issuing authority should describe in general terms only.
This template covers the document in eight scenes: two on what is physically in the cover, two on the data held and signed, one on what happens at the gate in the three seconds a reader has, one on the protections against remote reading, one on what the chip does not contain, and one on what a damaged chip means for the traveller.
