Electronic Passports
The Department of State plans to begin issuing electronic passports as early as February in a pilot program that will include diplomatic and official passports. In March, electronic passports will go into pilot production for tourists. By the end of 2005, the Department intends to be in the final stages of transition to electronic passports across the nation.
Electronic passports look like conventional passports and contain the same written personal data and photo. The difference is that a chip the size of a button on a cell phone and an antenna array the size of an index card are laminated into the back cover of the electronic passport. The chip is hidden inside the fabric of the cover.
The chip will record the photograph and personal data of the passport holder. “We have reserved space on the chip for future needs,” says Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for passport services with the Bureau of Consular Affairs. “The extra space might accommodate additional photo images of a person, which would make it easier to apply facial recognition technology. We have no plans for additional biometrics such as fingerprints.”
The information on the chip uses public key technology to enable immigration officials at border crossings to determine that the passport being presented was issued by an authorized government agency. In short, the public key technology makes passports harder to fake and makes fakes easier to detect.
Here’s how it works. At a border crossing, an official places the passport booklet on top of a reader. It is a contactless system because the chip does not make a direct electronic connection with a reader. To promote security and to prevent passersby from accessing data on the chip, the reading distance has — as of now — been limited to a maximum of four inches. Energy from the reader activates the chip, which transmits its data to the reader.
The data includes the photograph, biographical information, and a digital signature, formatted by specifications written by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The digital signature makes the electronic passport work. When the passport was created, public key technology created the digital signature, which is nothing more than a unique string of numbers, called a hash, which is generated by carrying out a series of complex mathematical functions on the digital (or binary) data that composes the photograph and the individual’s biographical information. A piece of software called a private key generates the hash and writes it onto the chip. Only a private key can write to the chip.
When the passport reader captures the data at a border crossing, the reader uses a public key made available by the issuing government to create another hash from the electronic data. The system then compares the two hashes. Matching hashes confirm that no one has tampered with the data — nothing was deleted, added, moved or changed.
“If the hash comparison indicates that data on the passport has changed, the comparison would fail, and it would raise suspicions,” says Neville Pattinson, director of business development, technology, and government affairs for Axalto Inc., an Austin, Texas-based smart card provider competing with five other companies for the electronic passport business. “This process is called an integrity check. It’s based on public key technology now used to sign documents on the Internet.”
“We see this process as a major step in improving the security of passports,” Moss adds. “We’re trying to make certain that a person traveling on a passport is traveling on a document issued by a government.”
However, electronic passports will not replace human security checks, says Moss. Immigration officers will continue to check the passport booklets as they always have, evaluating subtle printing features, watermarks, special fibers and other markings that indicate authenticity.
