New chip and pin passport?

Question

On the new British passport there is now a chip and pin on it for scanning. What information does this give immigration, and how much information, and what is the purpose of it.

Answer 1

this is becoming an international standard, the Machine Readable Passport.

usually, the same information as the ones printed on your passport will be encoded in them.  the purpose is basically ease of use, when immigation (also of other countries) can easily just insert your passport into a reader and all information can easily be scanned and verified, without encoding them again. but most especially, it is a tool to avoid fake passports.

i will not worry much about privacy of information contained therein.  this is being done, foremost, for your protection, to ensure that the holder of the passport is really you.