World Cup 2005: RFID Surveillance

If you’re considering going to the World Cup in Germany next year, it appears that tickets will have an embedded RFID chip linked to your passport. While this is meant to make it more difficult to resell tickets, it also means you have to plan very carefully what games you are going to and who you are going with. I hope that this really does keep ticket prices down enogh to outweight the the potential inconveniences that this may cause. When we went to the Euro Cup in Portugal last summer, after-market prices were at least 5 times higher ( over 500 euros ) than the official ticket priceslisted on the UEFA site.

World Cup 2006 ‘abused for mega-surveillance project’

To apply for a ticket you have to give your name, address,
nationality, which team you want to support and your bank details. You
must also supply your ID or passport number and your birth date.

Assuming you are successful, you receive a fully personalized ticket
containing an RFID chip; this enables authorities to check the ticket
against your passport. Very little information resides on the chip: the
identity check is conducted against a database at the German Football
Association (DFB).