E-passports Ready For Boarding

[george]

E-PASSPORTS READY FOR BOARDING

Trial of electronic passports among the general public will kick off today

DON MUANG AIRPORT: -- The Consular Affairs Department will today begin pilot testing electronic passports (e-passports) with the general public after commencing a similar test project with government officers on May 26.

The department expects to issue 500 e-passports to government officers and another 500 to general citizens before the launch of the e-passports in August.

Consular Affairs Department director-general Anucha Osathanond told Database that the department will issue 7 million e-passports over the next 10 years.

Not everyone will have to change to the new format immediately. Anyone whose passport has not expired will not have to apply for an e-passport, although frequent travellers to countries that have implemented e-passports, such as the United States and some countries in Europe, might need one.

The department expects that e-passports will lead to quicker passage through airport controls, better aviation security and added protection against identity theft.

The new passports are the same size but on the outside cover there is an embedded contactless 64-bit chip for storing personal information including name, date of birth, address, a right index finger print, face geometry and PKI (Public Key Infrastructure).

"We will not keep anything in the chip other than the information that appears on the ID card in order to protect privacy," Anucha said.

The passport will also have a barcode for countries that do not have machines to read data from the chip.

The holder's picture and personal data are also printed using laser engraving technology to make fraud difficult, he said.

"A passport is proof of nationality so top security must be applied," he said.

The e-passport project was initiated as part of an e-government move a couple of years ago and is separate from the Interior Ministry's smart ID card project.

The Foreign Ministry's e-passport committee announced the tender for the seven-billion baht project last year and finalised its decision on January 26 this year. The 10-year e-passport contract was given to a Chan Wanich Security-NEC consortium.

Chan Wanich Security has printed passports for the Consular Affairs Departments since 1992. The company also prints contactless stored-value cards and tokens for the subway system, cheques, train tickets, and share certificates for the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

The company has some 60 Thai and foreign engineers working on the e-passport project, which is the largest that the Consular Affairs Department has ever outsourced.

Outsourcing was used because the department was limited in terms of human resources and technology, Anucha noted.

"Although the e-passport project is a huge investment, we do not have to invest one satang because of the outsourcing model," the director-general claimed.

Thailand is one of only five countries that have begun an e-passport project today.

As a member of the 188-country International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN agency for international civil aviation, Thailand needs to follow ICAO standards to ensure the interopability of machine readable travel documents (MRTDs), which include passports, visas and identity cards, as well as the passport machine readers.

The ICAO has pushed for the introduction of biometric passports since 1997 and also works with the air transport industry and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) on global standards.

In 2002, ICAO endorsed facial recognition for biometric identification, with an option of using one or two secondary biometrics such as fingerprints and iris scans.

In Thailand, the Consular Affairs Department selected fingerprints as its secondary identification source.

"We will scan only the right index finger," he said, noting that finger scanning was also needed when picking up an e-passport.

The ICAO also selected high-capacity, contactless integrated circuit (IC) chips to store the identification information.

Chan Wanich Security Printing ######, Thitipong Buppondom, said the chip can only be written to once.

"This is because of the security standard, which will not allow information stored in the chip to be changed. The data is locked by a cryptographic technique, which means each e-passport cannot be renewed after the five-year validity date," he said, noting that the contactless ICs usually have a 10-year service life.

The chips proposed for the passports will have a shorter readable range than those equipped with Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology, he noted.

Based on the ISO/IEC 14443 standard, the maximum RFID range is around 10 centimeters, while the range for Thai e-passports would be only 2-5 centimeters, Thitipong said.

If a passport holder wants to prevent unauthorised reading, a metal jacket around the passport can be used.

The chip uses NEC encryption technology based on PKI. If the PKI keys are not correct, an alert message will be sent to authorities.

To prepare for the project, the Consular Affairs Department is overhauling its front and back-end IT systems.

It is introducing mobile service booths equipped with a height measuring machine, a mirror, a digital camera, a PC, a finger print scanner and a printer.

"The service process will take only 15 seconds," Mr Anucha said.

The Chan Wanich-NEC consortium has already implemented a 120-million baht laser engraving printer. It will add up to four machines in the future to produce 700,000 e-passports a year and 7 million over the next 10 years.

To ensure maximum security, all passports will be printed in a secured room located in the Consular Affairs Department on Chaeng Watthana Road. The room is also guarded and monitored.

"Every month, three executives will need to verify the system operation by pressing key numbers and scanning our fingers," said the director-general.

The department plans to serve around 3,000 people per day _ today's service record is only around 2,000, he said, noting that the process will still take two days for issuing a new e-passport.

The Consular Affairs Department will implement 20 service booths at its headquarters, others at its three branches in Bangkok and a further 81 locations overseas.

"Our staff will be trained to use the new system for four days. They also need to pass a test," he said.

There will also be 54 e-passport card readers installed at the immigration counter service. The machines will initially be deployed at Donmuang International Airport and the new Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

During the pilot test period, the Chan Wanich-NEC consortium will set up two auto-gate machines, one at the arrival hall and another at the departure hall, at terminal 1 of the airport.

Han Jong Kwang, NEC's project manager, said the auto-gate would reduce the work of immigration officers.

When passing through the gate, the e-passport holder inserts the book for machine reading, then presses the finger scanner and takes a picture. Three digital cameras are installed for people of varying height.

"The verification process will take only 30 seconds," Kwang said.

The machine is set to accept three re-trys. After this the gate would be locked and immigration officers in a control room alerted.

There is also a help button for people in need of assistance.

NEC can also add features such as boarding pass and immigration form scanning.

The director-general said that the high-tech project would not affect the current 1,000 baht fee charged for passports.

"We will maintain the fee for at least the first few years, although the cost has increased from 150 baht a book to 993.25 baht," he said.

--Bangkok Post 2005-06-01