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| Subject: Australia Weighs Long-Lasting Design For Chip-Based PassportThe agency is testing a large-memory contactless chip—with 512 kilobytes of electrically erasable read-only memory--in the proposed passport. | |
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Author: It is reportedly still on track to begin issuing its first passport incorporating biometrics and contactless chips by October 2004 |
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Date Posted: Sunday, September 14, 03:03:13am Australia Weighs Long-Lasting Design For Chip-Based Passport Beijing, China—Passports Australia is considering a new passport design that amounts to gluing an oversized smart card into the passport booklet, a government official tells Card Technology. The passport agency will use the card to house a contactless chip and antenna supporting facial recognition biometrics. The agency is testing a large-memory contactless chip—with 512 kilobytes of electrically erasable read-only memory--in the proposed passport. It hopes the card, which has the thickness of a credit card and length and width of a standard passport booklet, will allow the chip, antenna and bonding between the two to withstand the wear and tear passports must endure over their 10-year lifespan. The passport agency is believed to be the furthest along in the world in developing a biometrics-based passport that complies with guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organization. It is reportedly still on track to begin issuing its first passport incorporating biometrics and contactless chips by October 2004, the deadline for countries in the U.S. Visa Waiver program to have a program in place for issuing biometrics-based passports meeting the ICAO guidelines or risk being booted out of the program. "We know we can get data into the chip; we know we can read the chip; we know it's possible to physically insert a card into the passport," says Ranald Kennard, manager for traveler strategies for the Australian Customs Service. The customs service is a separate agency from Passports Australia, but works with the latter and has its own trial going on of a biometrics-based passport for frequent travelers. The trial does not use a chip, however. Kennard believes Passports Australia is testing such a large chip because it wants to store a high-resolution facial image or set of images in order to keep error rates low. It also wants to be ready to store other data following the rollout of the new passport, including possibly another biometric identifier, such as fingerprints. The chip the agency is testing reportedly comes from Japan-based Sharp Microelectronics. Kennard attended the second annual National Smart ID + E-Passports conference in Beijing this week. Reported by Dan Balaban in Beijing. (2003-09-11) Australian Customs Service Seeks To Expand Biometrics Trial Beijing, China—The Australian Customs Service plans to expand its test of biometrics for speeding frquent travelers through airport checkpoints, following a successful ongoing trial with Quantas Airways crew members, launched last November. The agency enrolled 4,000 crew members, using a set of five facial images converted to templates and stored on a database. A number on each crew member’s passport is linked to the biometric data, allowing for a one-to-one match when the crew member stands for a live scan at a special immigration gate at Sydney Airport. All told, the customs service recorded 50,000 transactions over nine months and experienced a 2% failure rate, says Ranald Kennard, manager of traveler strategies for the customs service. Of the errors, most were false rejections of crew members who should have been allowed to pass through the gate. The rest were rejections for other reasons, along with a very small number of false acceptances of passport-holders who should have been rejected. Kennard declined to reveal the false acceptance rate, but credited the facial recognition system with being "highly accurate." Each transaction took an average of 10 seconds. The agency is seeking government funding to expand the project to other airports in Australia and other air crews. The customs service will also work with its sister agency, Passports Australia, which is developing a chip-based passport incorporating facial recognition biometrics. "The idea is to make it a universal system and not limited it to frequent travelers," he tells Card Technology. He spoke at this week’s National Smart ID + E-Passport conference in Beijing. (2003-09-11) [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |