[wkat4242]

Yes but. In Europe this tech is also in our id cards whether said passport is printed on the outside (considering it's just a credit card format). You still have to see it but it doesn't have to be opened to the right page like a passport.

Both sides even have the info printed. One side in human format, the owner side in machine readable.

[lukan]

Yes, but this still means a attacker needs to have physical access to the passport?

[tialaramex]

They need to know the information which functions as key. Because many people don't trust government secrets, the information used for this purpose on a passport is actually just facts about you which were already printed in your passport, plus the passport number. The machine summarises these in a "Machine readable zone" but they're nothing you didn't know.

For a random traveller you can probably guess roughly how old they are, which is a few bits for the date-of-birth, and maybe you could strike up conversation and discover their name (or maybe it's printed on baggage, called out by fellow travellers etc.) but yeah it'll be very hard

For a very well known person you can likely discover everything except the passport number and you might get a decent guess at that from knowing roughly when it would be issued.

[lukan]

"For a very well known person you can likely discover everything except the passport number and you might get a decent guess at that from knowing roughly when it would be issued."

From a very well known person you could probably also steal everything you need directly, if your purpose is to create damage.

[wkat4242]

Kinda the same as with the NFC.

You can read from a small distance, probably further than you can read an NFC tag with your phone. And you can automate both on a phone (OCR and NFC)