Pictures may indeed be worth a thousand words, but that conversion rate may soon no longer satisfy British customs officials planning to issue 'smart passports' by 2005. ICNewcastle.co.uk is reporting that the UK Passport Service wants to insert physiognomic data into a chip embedded into the passport, the better to attest that the individual bearing the credential is precisely the one described. The chip would map personal, uniquely identifying attributes, e.g., the distance between a traveller’s eyes and the interval spacing her nose and chin.
A supplementary passport card resembling a credit card, onto which would be loaded still other biometric singularities – possibly iris scans and fingerprints – is on the table as well, and could be teamed with the hard-copy document by 2006.
The new vigilance will be a bit pricey, however, with the cost of a passport lifted to a tentative E75 (£52) by 2006, up from the current E48 (£33).
Quelle: europemedia
