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Biometrics: The next wave
The Ministry of External Affairs is clear about its focus
on implementing e-passports come 2008, a vital part of which will be the use
of biometrics. Here are a few benefits the trade can reap from this initiative.
By Chetan Kapoor
 If
recent reports are to be believed, acquiring a passport is going to be simpler.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) will outsource a chunk of the regional
passport offices' work to make the process faster under its ambitious Rs 8 crore
'Passport Service Project'.
As per the project, the MEA will have 68 private centres to help the passport
offices. This is a well-planned scheme before the government rolls out its e-passports
or biometric passports in 2008. This presents an interesting scenario for the
Indian travel and tourism industry.
Early references of biometrics can be traced back to a practice followed in
ancient China where babies were distinguished from each other through ink stamps
of palm and footprints. However, widespread use of biometrics in the travel
and tourism industry is a direct off-shoot of the September 11, 2001 attacks
on the World Trade Centre in New York in the United States.
After the attacks, a need to have more stringent and precise techniques was
felt to identify the people travelling. So, the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and
the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 were enforced
to mandate the use of biometrics into border security. Additional terrorist
attacks across the globe only added to the need to have such systems in place.
Brief biography
Biometrics refers to the use of automated methods to recognise a person based
on either physiological or biological characteristics. Imagine a device that
would be able to detect who you are by simply scanning your fingerprints, iris
or would have all of one's information stored in a chip. At a time when the
number of people travelling is increasing across the world, maintenance of security
and
controlling illegal immigrations has made visa issuance a hectic and worrisome
affair. Governments of various countries, including India, believe that an elaborate
use of biometrics is the need of the hour. Fingerprinting, signature verification,
retinal scanning, hand geometry and facial recognition are the popular known
forms of biometric verifications used worldwide.
India's e-passport project started off with a pilot project whereby an electronic
chip embedded in the passport was provided to diplomats and officials by the
end of 2007. The government has constituted a technical committee to finalise
the technical specifications of the e-passports. Even the National Institute
of Smart Government (NISG), Hyderabad has prepared a comprehensive study on
the passport issuance system and the government has taken a number of steps
to bring transparency to passport offices through computerisation, introduction
of online registration, tele-enquiry, strengthening of grievance redressal mechanisms,
etc.
| After a four-month trial, air travellers at the London
Heathrow airport backed biometric security checks. Fingerprint and iris
scans were used for screening more than 3,000 passengers who volunteered
to take part in the trial on Cathay Pacific and Emirates flights to and
from Dubai and Hong Kong.
The miSense trial - where passengers had to scan their
passport and right index finger at a self-service check-in kiosk before
getting a boarding card - was aimed at testing the feasibility of advanced
passenger screening in UK, which would allow the traveller's details to
be checked against various intelligence and immigration database and 'watch
lists' before being allowed to board a flight. A more advanced screening
collected 10 fingerprint, two iris and a facial image scan during a manual
enrolment, which was then uploaded onto an RFID smartcard, used in conjunction
with a fingerprint reader at an automatic immigration barrier on arrival
at Dubai, Heathrow or Hong Kong airports.
About 81 per cent of the passenger feedback rated the
miSense service as "good" or "excellent" and 87 per
cent believed that the enrolment process was easy. The main benefit cited
by those who participated in the trial was faster journey times. The average
time to fully enrol a traveller was seven minutes and the self-service
border clearance gate recorded an average time of 17 seconds to let passengers
through. More than 3,000 traveller records were transferred to the Border
& Immigration Agency background checking system during the trial and
96 per cent were processed in fewer than 30 seconds. This shows the high
degree of acceptability biometrics is gaining in some parts of the world.
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How it helps
No longer will there be any mediators in making passports, which has been a
practice for many years in the country. Earlier, all a person had to do was
to provide an agent with the concerned documents who would complete all the
formalities. This, in turn, led to a lot of red tape and corruption in the process
of issuing passports, and providing freeway to forged passports and visas.
With the introduction of biometrics, the government is hopeful of curtailing
this. Biometrics call for an individual to be present in person and provide
the necessary fingerprint and iris scans, which is not very easily duplicated.
Biometrics is about to change the rules of the game.
VFS Global, part of the Kuoni Travel Group, assists diplomatic missions by managing
administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to the entire lifecycle of a
visa application process. It serves17 diplomatic missions and has presence in
41 countries worldwide. A key aspect of its service is use of biometrics for
some countries. Ajit Alexander, its assistant vice president (Business Development),
says, "The use of biometrics in the Indian environment will only knock
off document identification for verification, which can be easily forged otherwise.
With technology now available and opening of number of new centres, MEA has
a clear sight on how this will unfold over the next year."
Zubin Karkaria, CEO and managing director (India & South Asia) for Kuoni
Travel Group, adds, "Biometrics has proven to be a very reliable tool to
establish traveller identities. They are gradually but surely emerging as the
backbone of our entire identity verification systems. It offers a set of tools
that meets our security, facilitation and privacy objectives, and is scalable
and flexible enough to adapt to changing technological demands over time."
The use of biometrics is spreading its reach across the globe. Countries are
investing heavily in protecting themselves from terrorist strikes and other
unlawful activities and biometrics is surely the next big wave. Some even predict
that all important documents like one's passport, driving licence, insurance
details, social security numbers, bank accounts, etc could be rolled into one
with all information stored in the chip in e-passports.
India has a far and stretched landmass and for the process to be successful,
theoretically all the centres must be equipped with technology to process biometric
data. Once the documents required to verify identity are co-related with biometric
scans, it is next to impossible to forge passports and most importantly, the
identity. Concludes Alexander, "Biometrics make the entire process stringent
with lots of checks. However, the success of this project will only depend on
the scalability and the service levels provided in the process."
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