China, a country known for keeping a hard line and a keen eye on security has taken the next step for the Olympics.

Tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies are embedded with a microchip containing the bearer’s photograph, passport details, addresses, e-mail and telephone numbers. Less to do with security and more to do with maintaining a positive public image during the ceremonies, the high tech tickets are meant to keep trouble makers out of the 91,000 seat stadium. Chinese officials fear protesters might wreck the glitzy ceremonies, unfurling Tibet flags, anti-China banners or even T-shirts adorned with strident messages.

Aside from doing very little to increase security, these tickerts raise huge questions about privacy and identity theft, and they pretty much ensure utter chaos at the ticket gates.

Not all tickets will contain the excessive amounts of personal data, only the tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies, some which are going for $720.00 a piece at face value.

Will they assist in securing the games? Roger Clarke, an Australian security expert says no.

“They should be concentrating on sniffing out the kinds of dangerous stuff rather than worrying about the identify of the people with the tickets,” said Roger Clarke

His Xamax Consultancy in Canberra advises businesses in online security and identity authentication.

Clarke added:

“The way in which you recognize an evildoer, somebody who wants to throw a bomb, somebody who wants to unfurl a Tibet flag is not on the basis of their identity, it’s the act that they perform and it’s the materials they carry with them.”

In the end this idea may do more harm to China’s publicity then letting in all the “Free Tibet” protesters.