The increasing patronage of Digital Passports

Zdnetasia recently reported that Indian government has announced plans to introduce digital passports to its citizens from 2010 onwards.  We decided to take a closer look at what digital passports are and how they are implemented around the world.

What is a digital passport?

A digital passport, also called biometric passport or e-passport is the same as the traditional passport with the addition of a small integrated circuit or chip embedded in the back cover. The passport contains a microchip which contains the same information as on the picture page and a biometric photograph in addition to a machine readable zone. The chip is based on the "WORM" technology which stands for "Write Once, Read Many". These passports are designed to be harder to forge and to identify the bearer more securely.

The e-passport has been implemented in around 70 countries in the world. Most European union countries had introduced e-passports around the 2004-05 time frame. In the UK, the digital passport has been issued since February 2006.

Controversies

It has not been smooth sailing for digital passports from their inception. They've had their share of controversies too. There have been some protests in the past about the privacy of the bearer. Activists in many countries have questioned the lack of information about what exactly the passport's chips will contain.  When the e-passport was introduced in the United States, there was criticism against the usage of RFID in the chips. Privacy activists were claiming that the signals from the chip were not encrypted and can be easily intercepted, thus jeopardizing the privacy of the bearer. Just a few days ago, human rights campaigners in Netherlands were up in arms against the government policy of storing fingerprints taken from passports on to national database.

In spite of all the opposition, more and more governments are keen on issuing digital passports to their citizens. This is because it has the potential to bring down passport forgery thereby improving the security aspect as well as it is easier to maintain than traditional passports. So the coming years should see most European Union and Asian countries actively embracing this RFID-based technology.