《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》China’s new travel cards ineffective at tracking: expert

/ Staff writer, with CNA

China’s new travel passes are less effective at tracking Taiwanese visitors than mobile phones, an expert at the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute （ITRI） said.

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Tu Tze-chen （杜紫宸）, head of the institute’s Knowledge-based Economy and Competitiveness Center, said that the National Security Bureau and the Criminal Investigation Bureau had run tests on a new electronic entry card China is issuing to Taiwanese visitors during the card’s trial run.

The bureaus did not find any radio frequency identification （RFID） tags — tiny microchips that can automatically transmit all of the information about the holder to a special scanner — embedded in the cards as previously reported, nor other more advanced microchips, Tu said.

It would be too costly to embed more advanced and less detectable chips in millions of copies of the card, he said.

Most countries, including China, are monitoring foreign visitors for national security purposes, and they should use the most effective tools currently available, which are mobile phones, Tu said, adding that tracking Taiwanese visitors with an RFID-based electronic entry card would be “an unnecessary move.”

According to Tu, RFID can work in a 2m range in ordinary applications, but this can be extended to between 10m and 20m with enhanced readers. This means the technology will not work in a long-range natural environment that is full of electromagnetic interference, he said.

Tu was responding to a Facebook post by a professor of electrical engineering at National Cheng Kung University, who claimed that China’s new travel pass is embedded with RFID tags for tracking purposes.

Citing the results of an analysis by the Mainland Affairs Council （MAC）, Premier Mao Chi-kuo （毛治國） said in his special report to the Legislative Yuan on Friday that the new electronic entry card is equipped with no more than 0.1Mb of storage capacity and cannot store biometric details of their holders.

Mao’s report was delivered at the request of the legislature amid suspicions that the new card is designed to downgrade Taiwan’s status to that of Hong Kong and Macau and concerns that it might cause information security breaches.

Mao has also expressed the government’s “extreme dissatisfaction” over the lack of prior discussion with Taiwan about Beijing’s plans to start issuing the cards.

After starting a trial run in July, China began the full implementation of the new credit card-sized travel pass last Monday.

The cards have replaced the passport-style document that Taiwanese had previously used to enter China.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES