Dear Readers,
This week’s blog is how a biometric passport is expected to enable technological advancement? How is it secure for all the stakeholders?
Ambimat Electronics, with its experience of over four decades as an ODM of IoT products, wishes to draw the attention of its customers and readers of blog posts towards this upcoming field.
Introduction
To establish a positive match between the travel document and the person who presents it, there are four typical applications:
- 1. Each time a traveler enters or exits a State, his identity can be verified against the image created when his travel document was issued. This will ensure that the holder of a document is the legitimate person to whom it was issued and will enhance any advance passenger information (API) system’s effectiveness.
- 2. Two-way check — The traveler’s current captured biometric image data and the biometric template from his travel document (or from a central database) can be matched to confirm that the travel document has not been altered.
- 3. Three-way check — The traveler’s current biometric image data, the image from his travel document, and the image stored in a central database can be matched (by constructing biometric templates of each) to confirm that the travel document has not been altered. This technique matches the person with his passport and with the database recording the data put in that passport when it was issued.
- 4. Four-way check — A fourth confirmatory check, albeit not an electronic one, is visually matching the results of the three-way check with the digitized photograph on the data page of the traveler’s passport.
In the second case – application for an ePassport – there are two basic applications:
- 1. The end user’s biometric data, generated by the enrolment process, can be used in search of one or more biometric databases (identification) to determine whether the end-user is known to any of the corresponding systems (for example, holding a passport under a different identity, having a criminal record, holding a passport from another State).
- 2. When the end-user collects the passport or visa (or presents himself for any step in the issuance process after the initial application is made and the biometric data is captured), his biometric data can be retaken and verified against the initially captured biometric data.
The benefits of the ePassport are, in fact, an enhancement of the many advantages derived from regular MRPs. What an MRP can do, an ePassport can normally do better and much more securely. When considering the list of benefits for various categories of stakeholders, this basic principle can be applied.
Airports and port authorities
First and foremost, ePassports lead to more rapid, secure, and efficient processing of passengers. This has enormous logistical and financial repercussions, as there is a direct correlation between the ability to move large crowds through port facilities and the facility’s size needed to handle the crowds.
By moving passengers more rapidly, securely, and more efficiently, there is a better use of space and a reduction in the need to build or improve ever more expensive facilities. This will be a prime consideration when coping with the anticipated sustained growth of air traffic in the years to come. If new facilities are needed, they themselves will become more effective in handling the greater number of passengers.
Airlines and travel companies
Passenger agents are the front line of air travel at an airport. MRTDs or ePassports can significantly enhance their ability to verify documents and to perform a host of other routine tasks.
By linking an automated passport reader at the check-in counter to various databases, the agent can check the authenticity of the document, run the information against its own “customers of interest” list, connect the customer/document to baggage handling and Passenger Name Record information, input into a flight (or other) manifest and eventually, verify boarding after check-in.
There is an obvious saving in the time for airline personnel in handling each passenger. But there are also potential benefits in terms of the security and efficiency of the totality of the process and the avoidance of fines or other penalties for bringing undocumented or improperly documented aliens into a country.
Government agencies and services
When it comes to government services and procedures, the benefits and MRPs – and especially ePassports – take on their full measure. Here are a few examples:
Advance Passenger Information Systems (API) – Using these systems, air operators can electronically send customs, immigration, and other authorities at the place of destination a list of passengers. This allows the border officials to process, much in advance of the flight’s arrival, the information received for further action, if necessary.
Safety and Security – Reading equipment (readers) at border crossings provides the capability to detect false or fraudulent passports. It also gives more time to perform a visual authentication, still an important factor in assessing passengers’ behavior. MRPs and ePassports facilitate the rapid and precise identification of those who would misuse travel documents to further criminal activity, illegally immigrate, etc.
Cost-Efficiency – The ability to identify “problem cases” rapidly and precisely allows governments to spend their always-limited border control and law enforcement resources on those who should be given a more detailed inspection. That efficiency also reduces the need to hire additional government personnel and facility costs.
Improvement of systems – It is relatively inexpensive to improve the passport and passport issuance systems, compared to the cost of fraud and case-related investigations and prosecutions by law enforcement authorities after someone has compromised the travel document system.
Electronic monitoring & control of issuance process – The automated issuance of passports and other travel documents also represents a significant benefit. It allows issuing authorities to electronically monitor and control the document’s issuance at all stages of the application and issuance process.
Electronic tracking of passports – Governments that issue machine-readable passports also gain a security benefit concerning their own population because the passport issuing authority is better able to track passports and applications through all stages of the issuance process. This has potential benefits in blank passport control, fee control, verification of citizenship, name clearance, and in other ways that automation can be used to reduce workload and increase efficiency.
Databases – Using machine-readable visas and/or passports as a reliable data source, governments can build useful databases that can serve as a uniform source of information in a standardized format, to speed the border control process. Databases are also useful in tracking high-risk travelers, for instance, making certain that short-term visitors depart as required and do not violate the terms of their entry permission.
Fraud Control – In the future, we are also likely to see the creation of databases that are shared voluntarily, even across national boundaries, and between the public and private sectors. This will make it easier to identify people traveling with stolen documents and people who have fraudulently obtained an otherwise valid passport based upon stolen citizenship document forms.
Travelers
Obviously, travelers have much to gain in this accelerated pace of going through all security and facilitation procedures. As ePassports become more common worldwide, it will be easier to pass all formalities at departure and arrival. Coupled with e-ticketing and the streamlining of passenger handling by airlines, including baggage, perhaps some measuring what made flying magical will return to holidays and business trips.
About Ambimat Electronics:
With design experience of close to 4 decades of excellence, world-class talent, and innovative breakthroughs, Ambimat Electronics is a single-stop solution enabler to Leading PSUs, private sector companies, and start-ups to deliver design capabilities and develop manufacturing capabilities in various industries and markets. AmbiIoT design services have helped develop Smartwatches, Smart homes, Medicals, Robotics, Retail, Pubs and brewery, Security.
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