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issues
This page considers questions of privacy, security and
identity in relation to passports.
It covers -
introduction
Passports, visas and similar travel documents involve
three overlapping questions -
- provenance,
sometimes characterised as its 'authenticity'
- certitude
- is it borne by the person whose information features
in the document
- context,
what other information available or needed for interpretation
of the document
Ultimately
any passport - likely other identity documents - is only
as good as the checking, whether at the time of issue,
time of presentation (eg while crossing a border) or otherwise
(eg during a detailed forensic examination once authenticity
has been called into question).
Its value for governments and other bodies involves perceptions
of risk. It also involves tradeoffs. The impact of tradeoffs
between free movement and security for example potentially
include undue delays, administrative costs, erosion of
privacy and reinforcement of ethnic or other stereotypes.
provenance
Questions of provenance centre on the
document's authenticity, including differentiation between
the legitimacy of the physical format - paper, ink, cardboard
and gold foil - and the status of information embodied
in that document.
Was it issued by a government agency? Is it a forgery
that has the same appearance and other characteristics
of an official document?
More subtly, is the physical entity legitimate but the
content illicit. Some criminals have recognised, for example,
that there is no need to manufacture a passport from scratch
when they can use a stolen 'blank' or simply buy a passport
with the details of their choice from a corrupt official.
Estimates of the scale of fraud - and extent of its detection
- are contentious. However, in 2003 the government of
Papua New Guinea announced the theft of that nation's
passport database (along with computer backups and blank
passports), with the French government revealing in 2004
that some 10,000 blank French passports, 5,000 blank French
driver's licenses, 10,000 blank car ownership certificates
and 1,000 international driver's licenses without any
identification numbers had disappeared. In 2008 the UK
Identity & Passport Service announced theft of 3,000
blank passports, along with the van carrying them.
Questions of provenance also encompass recognition of
the government that issued the document and more broadly
acceptance that the document has an official status.
As we noted on the preceding page of this note, while
all animals in the international community are ostensibly
equal, some of less equal than others. Particular states
have chosen not to recognise the existence of some others
(notably non-recognition of Israel and therefore its passports)
or Many law-abiding seafarers were detained for up to
two weeks after Sept. 11, either on shore or aboard docked
ships. During a time of extraordinary security precautions,
some officials were “reluctant to recognize IDs
issued by foreign governments,” Dani Apave, senior
maritime specialist at the ILO, said at the recent
Anti-forgery technologies to defend the integrity of documents
certitude
Bearer - essentially does it indicate the person’s
true identity. Dual citizenship. Japanese swap, cooked
details to get legit document
People are not good at facial recognition or accurately
identifying other biometrics such as height (hich, importantly,
aren’t unique)
technologies of authentication
From a technological perspective passports have followed
the same trajectory as other key identification documents,
with a movement from handwritten script on paper, adoption
of anti-forgery mechanisms
(from watermarks through security threads and intaglio
printing to lamination, holograms and laser perforation),
inclusion of photographs and OCR text, and contemporary
incorporation of RFID tags.
Changes have been incremental. In appearance the passports
of most nations are very similar to those created in 1914
or 1920, replete with insignia, curlicues and gold leaf.
The Australian Passports Office thus boasts that in 1999-2000
production required 69,000 metres of gold foil, 1,100
litres of glue and 95,500 metres of thread.
In 2004 Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU warned that biometric
passports will -
- become
gold standard of identity verification around the world
- become
template for domestic National ID systems
- increasingly
be demanded for more and more purposes, abroad and domestically
- be
subject to private sector 'piggybacking'
He
concluded that "expansion is inevitable"
next page (traveller
surveillance)
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