Journal of Engineering and Public Policy
(Vol. 9, August 2002)

Biometric Passports: Policy for International and Domestic Deployment

By G. Matthew Ezovski

Executive Summary

The passport has long served as the cornerstone of international travel. It is unique compared to other travel documents in that it alone can simultaneously establish two characteristics: identity and citizenship. While this core purpose has withstood the tests of time, its reliability has been called into question in the post-9/11 world. Large numbers of U.S. and other passports are lost or stolen every year, and the only practical means of confirming proper ownership is by looking at the facial image inside the document. Current technologies have created the possibility for greater assurance of proper document ownership.

The international community, through the International Civil Aviation Organization, has adopted “electronic” passports, which contain smart chips that can transmit stored data wirelessly to chip readers. The chip will contain a digital photograph of the individual to whom the passport was issued, allowing for analytic biometric comparisons against the facial features of whoever uses the document. Current U.S. regulations require that the 27 member nations of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) must begin issuing electronic passports by October 2006 in order for their citizens to be able to continue to enter the U.S. without first obtaining a visa.

A number of technological and political hurdles have been encountered since the effort to disseminate the electronic and biometric passport kicked into high gear in 2001. Privacy advocates raised issues regarding the security of data stored on the passports’ contactless integrated circuit (IC) chips, as well as concerns regarding the potential use of fingerprints in passport authentication. The effectiveness of the chosen biometric, facial feature recognition, has also been questioned both by skeptics in Congress and by studies conducted for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In addition to reliability issues, new technology will force passport costs to rise substantially, resulting in initial annual U.S. costs of approximately $120 million.

Several challenges remain before full deployment of the biometric passport can be achieved.

• The United States must finalize its own plans for the document. In order for this to occur, all privacy concerns must be addressed.
   

• Other participating countries must sense the urgency of the implementation of the new passports. This urgency must quickly translate into action to meet upcoming deadlines in October 2006.

The State Department must continue to work to address the privacy concerns of individual citizens and interest groups, but currently planned enhancements should generally address most concerns. Technical challenges, such as decreased transmission times and reliability, resulting from the privacy enhancements must be mitigated. American officials should also work with representatives of other VWP countries and the ICAO to develop uniform plans for future enhancements to the electronic passport.

Given the complex nature of the technology and the amount of training which will go into a full rollout of the new passports, Congress should be prepared to extend the October 2006 deadline if VWP member nations fail to meet biometric passport requirements despite reasonable effort. Congress should also take into account the lessons learned from U.S. deployment of the electronic passport as it approaches similar situations in the near future, including further discussion of identity theft and expected oversight of the implementation of the Real ID Act.

 

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