Nowadays, for US passports (I don't know about other countries), the number/key needed to let the chip talk to you is printed on the photo page, so the older way of reading the NFC from afar won't work without that number.
This has nothing to do with ability to clone the passport. E.g anyone who held your passport for 10 seconds can still create clone with exactly the samw data on NFC chip.
Active Authentication is when NFC chip itself hold cross-signed signing key thar is not exportable so its possible to confirm passport wasnt cloned.
Active Authentication is when NFC chip itself hold cross-signed signing key thar is not exportable so its possible to confirm passport wasnt cloned.