Biometric passports expected in New Zealand and 187 other countries

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Biometrically-enabled passports are scheduled to become part of our travelling experience soon, with the final draft of the internationally interoperable biometric standard to be issued next month. This opens the way for a digitally encoded chip in a passport to be used in any of the 188 nations that are members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which has been coordinating the standard.

The primary biometric is an encoded reading of facial features (since this is a logical extension of the face-portrait carried in almost all passports), but provision has been made in the standard for images of the iris (the coloured part of the eye, with its near-unique pattern of radial stripes), fingerprints and fingerprint minutiae — the small unique details of how one ridge at a particular spot on one finger might suddenly end or branch into two.

The standard also specifies the kind of contactless integrated circuits that will be embedded in the passport to store the biometric data and enable it to be read by scanners.

It’s not just about checking someone’s biometric one-to-one against their physical characteristics at the border, says Terry Hartmann of Australia’s Foreign Affairs and Trade department; one-to-many checks are also likely to be made against a database of “persons of interest” and to see whether the traveller has ever previously applied for a passport under a different name.

United States border posts have begun fingerprinting and photographing citizens of other countries entering the US who do not have biometrically equipped passports. That includes New Zealand.

Accuracy of biometrics stil leaves something to be desired, says David Philp of the New Zealand passport office. “We’re not quite there yet — there are problems relating to recognising the faces of babies and others with small heads. But recognition rates are high, and the biometric is only one tool in the border officers’ armoury," he sats. Other checks can be called into play if the biometrics give uncertain readings.

Full implementation of “e-passports” is scheduled for 2007.