Police and Security, Vol. 21 No. 2, 2012.
Review article
The Deployment of Biometrics in Travel Documents
Jasminka Peroš
Gordan Mršić
; Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Nevenka Škavić
; Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Taking into consideration a constantly increasing trend in counterfeited travel documents and misuse of genuine documents, which facilitate movement of terrorists and other criminal groups, international activities have been focused on harmonization of security mechanisms in travel documents, establish-ment of effective supervision over their issuance and control of persons and documents at border crossing points. In order to prevent such movements and contribute to overall security, specifications and recommendations concerning biometric deployment in e-passports have been laid down at interna-tional level. Biometric e-passports are machine readable travel documents which, besides visually and optically read characteristics, also contain biometric features of a bearer that are digitally stored on contacless IC chip within the passport. Advantages of implementing biometric e-passports, with re-spect to establishing a higher security in international movement of persons through additional identity verification, are beyond any doubt but at the same time privacy issues related to sensitive biometric identifiers stored on chip arise.
This article describes application of biometric technology in security of travel documents with empha-sis on international, European and national legislation related to implementation of biometric elec-tronic passports, security mechanisms used to ascertain the integrity, authenticity and privacy of digi-tal data stored on chip in e-passports, as well as s significance of Identity Management Systems, that are closely related to the issues concerned.
Keywords
biometrics; biometric e-passports; mechanisms for securing digital data; Public key infrastructure; Identity Management Systems
Hrčak ID:
87239
URI
Publication date:
15.9.2012.
Visits: 3.434 *