Belgium is to begin issuing biometric passports before the end of the year, while in the US (which could be said to have started all this), the State Department is to begin a trial run this autumn, with full production hoped for next year. Register speculates:

The apparent ease with which these countries appear to be switching passport standards does raise just the odd question about the UK's very own ID card scheme, which proposes to ship its first biometric passports not soon, but in three years. Regular readers will recall that Home Secretary David Blunkett justifies the ID card scheme on the basis that most of the cost is money we'd have to spend anyway, because we need to upgrade our passports to meet US and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standards, and that by making this investment the UK will be putting itself ahead of the game, technology-wise, and that we shall all therefore be technology leaders and rich.

The biometric passport system the US intends to use simply seems to be an addition of the necessary machine readable capabilities to the existing system. Passport applications, including photograph, will still be accepted via mail, and the picture will then be encoded, added to the database and put onto the chip that goes in the passport. As you may note, a picture is in these terms a biometric, while a camera is a biometric reader, which they are. But don't noise it around, or you'll screw the revenues of an awful lot of snake-oil salesmen.

Back in the UK, we are of course rather more rigorous in our interpretation of the matter, and the system and its schedule will be priced accordingly. But should we worry about losing our lead? No, not exactly. We should worry about spending a great deal of money on a system which will largely police ourselves, and which - in the event of it actually working - will probably turn out to be a huge white elephant.