The Times (UK) reported on August 6 that it took less than an hour to hack into the UK's new and supposedly foolproof e-Passports, producing fake passports with photos of Osama Bin Laden and a suicide bomber. Both passports were then cheerfully accepted as genuine by the security system in place.

As Malta moves towards adopting similar technology for passports and ID cards, we should be asking whether this system will create a false sense of security rather than provide any real benefit.