We provide a description of the current Australian e-passport implementation, highlight security issues previously identified and identify new threats when an e-passport system is integrated with an automated processing systems like SmartGate. We also evaluate the European Union (EU) proposal for an Extended Access Control (EAC) mechanism for e-passports that intends to provide better security in protecting biometric information of the e-passport bearer. We then propose an on-line authentication mechanism for electronic passports that addresses the weakness in existing implementations, of both The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and EU. Our proposal utilises ICAO PKI implementation, thus requiring very little modifications to the existing infrastructure which is already well established.