Most people know that beginning next January American boaters
reentering home waters from Canadian waters will be required to produce
a passport at a customs office.

The government is about to begin inserting "chips" in the passports.
May be a good idea to prevent forgeries, etc, but there are some
legitimate privacy concerns. It might be possible for
unauthorized persons to "read" your passport information
electronically, and then there's the possibility that the chips might
have a use or two that we aren't being told about (to help fight
terrorism, of course).

Anyway, if you don't want a microchip embedded in your passport for
whatever purpose the government might want to embed one, now is the
time to apply or renew. It's apparently already too late in Colorado..

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/sep...0906idchip.htm