RFID Passport transition

As the new rules for the US border with Canada came into play, I anticipated long waits as my teenage daughter and I returned from a weekend in Toronto. U.S. border crossings have been notoriously slow for years, and with new rules requiring travellers to have passports, I assumed we would be in for a long wait.

We plugged in our iPod, and were no sooner getting out our snacks when it was our turn at the window! My passport took a couple minutes for the border guard to check, but my daughter's, which was issued after 2006 and is RFID-enabled, took less than two seconds as he glanced at her photo, which popped up on his computer monitor as soon as I handed the passport into his shack.

He didn't even have to open her passport. Just glanced at her, glanced at his computer screen, and waved us along. The RFID reader in his shack picked up the signal from my daughter's passport, then brought up her photo and electronic passport records from the government's database.

Indeed, it seems to be a smooth transition to the new border rules, assisted in part my lenient enforcement, and in part by speedy RFID identification.