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21 October 2005 UK to take fingerprints from 2009The UK plans to add digitized fingerprints to all its biometric passports and identity cards from 2009, and will begin producing passports with microchips, initially holding only a facial photograph, from next February. But Bernard Herdan, the chief executive of the UK Passport Service, said yesterday (20 October) that biometrics were useful only as part of wider security measures. "Biometrics are not a universal panacea,” Mr Herdan told the Biometrics 2005 conference in Westminster, adding that UKPS is aiming for a “holistic approach” in checking identity. To this end, personal interviews of passport applicants will start in October next year, although these will initially apply only to first-time applicants. These interviews will check that applicants match their submitted photographs, but also that they fit a “social footprint” of data held on them. UKPS is establishing 70 offices nationwide, for interviews and the collection of biometrics. "Moving to fingerprints is the next big challenge, when we’ve got the facial biometric covered,” said Herdan, adding that UKPS is planning a large-scale, non-compulsory, enrolment trial in 2007/8, before the collection of fingerprints for passports becomes compulsory. Herdan said that, if the UK government’s identity card bill – which passed its third reading in the House of Commons on Wednesday, with the Labour government’s majority cut from 66 to 25 – becomes law, this 2007/8 trial may include an incentive, in that participants would not have to attend again to apply for an identity card. The National Identity Register, which the identity card bill would create, goes well beyond the EU passport requirements, requiring biometric scans of both irises, as well as ten fingerprints and a facial scan. In the scheme’s so-called “voluntary” phase, identity card enrolment will be compulsory for everyone applying for a passport, a requirement which may be extended to other documents including driving licences. In response to a question, Herdan downplayed the use of irises: “It’s less intrusive, but not as mature yet,” he said of the technology. Meanwhile, he said that the public are becoming inured to giving fingerprints, despite the criminal connotations: “Helpfully, those travelling to the States are getting used to fingerprints at border posts,” he said. Herdan said that the new UK e-passport chip, to be embedded within the inside back-cover which already holds machine-readable biographical data, will have capacity for two fingerprints to be added, although some reprogramming of the chip will be required. This will allow the UK to remain within the US visa waiver programme, and is also required by European Union regulations. The cover of the e-passport will carry a small International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) logo. Herdan said that facial recognition technology has already helped tackle fraudulent passport applications, by matching duplicates within UKPS’s 25,000 images of known and suspected fraudulent passport applicants as they were digitized. “It’s been very difficult in the past for us to link up images, as it’s very difficult to remember that many faces,” he said. The computerized system’s linkages have helped extradite suspects, including one wanted abroad on a charge of armed robbery. © SA Mathieson 2005.
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