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To reduce the impact of foreign intelligence agencies? Especially important in the EU nowadays.

Basically any foreign intelligence agency can produce perfect fake passports (except for the chip, but you don't need a functional chip).

Even regular criminals manage to produce good enough documents to travel with, and those guys don't have access to Heidelberg printing presses.

Pretty sure any half-competent intelligence agency should be able to make the chip too, if only by infiltrating the company that makes the passports.

Sure, I can't imagine it being too difficult to compromise the keys for some first world country.

But there's no need to bother, you won't get busted at an airport because the chip of your passport failed. If they were suspicious, they'd just go through a document verification checklist and see if your passport has the correct physical features. Check out the PRADO glossary for example https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prado/en/prado-glossary/prad...

A bunch of EU countries still issue non-biometric passports, even if with limited validity periods.

Huh? As if an FSB agent couldn't get a passport..

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