According to reports from Times of India and other websites, the Indian government has decreed that starting next year, all citizens of that country will be mandated to obtain an RFID-enabled electronic passport (e-passport). The RFID technology to be used in the documents is expected to enable India—a country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion people—to reduce the incidence of identity theft and document forgery, while streamlining its immigration procedures.
The RFID chip will contain information about the passport’s holder, including his or her fingerprints, photograph and digital signature. The e-passport will be more durable in construction than typical passports and will be more secure since the RFID data will be encrypted, with features in place to prevent unauthorized parties from stealing personal data. The automation allowed by e-passports has enabled some airports to provide faster processing times and greater security in their immigration areas and at security checkpoints for those traveling with such documents.
During a trial period, approximately 20,000 Indian diplomats used the e-passports, with no major problems reported. Now, the documents will be rolled out throughout India’s population via the Ministry of External Affairs’ 36 passport offices. All newly issued passports and renewals will feature RFID technology beginning in 2021 and will comply with standards set forth by the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The chip will be about the size of a postage stamp, will contain 64 kilobytes of memory and will store data regarding up to 30 visits, and it’s expected to significantly speed up travelers’ movements through airports.
This week, according to SiFy.com, India’s National Informatics Centre (NIC) issued a request for proposals so that it could choose an agency to handle the IT infrastructure, with bidding for the RFPs expected to conclude by month’s end. According to SiFy, the system will need to handle 10,000 e-passports every hour, for a maximum of 50,000 per day, with that daily volume expected to scale up to 100,000. India’s program follows in the footsteps of other RFID or biometric e-passport systems in the United States, the European Union, Brazil, Australia, Malaysia, Venezuela and other areas of the world.
This will be a massive deployment on a nationwide scale, and it’s impressive to see India take such a major step in rolling out RFID technology for this purpose. Privacy advocates might find the idea unnerving, but as long as the Indian government can ensure the system’s security and protect individuals’ personal data, its e-passports stand to offer the country a lot of benefits—and once those benefits are proven, that could help push other countries to jump on the bandwagon and issue their own RFID passports, making international travel that much quicker, more secure and more efficient.
Rich Handley has been the managing editor of RFID Journal since 2005. Previously, he was the managing editor of Advanced Imaging magazine and the associate editor of Printing News. Rich has authored, edited or contributed to numerous books about pop culture and is also the editor of Eaglemoss’s Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection.