United Kingdom considers biometric passports

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By Laura Rohde

(IDG) -- The British government is considering incorporating biometric cards into passports within the next four years as part of its increased security and antifraud efforts.

The U.K. Passport Service (UKPS), an executive agency of the Home Office, is looking into the possibility of issuing biometric identification cards that would be encoded with personal details such as iris scans or fingerprints by 2006, a government spokeswoman said this week.

"As we announced in our e-business strategy report last September, the UKPS is looking at ways of making passports more secure. But we are at a very, very early stage and no decisions have been made yet. We have just completed a feasibility study, though we haven't as yet received the results," the spokeswoman said.

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The feasibility study was held at London's Heathrow Airport in an effort to expose any security issues in using biometrics, she said. More than 90 million passengers pass through immigration control at U.K. ports every year, according to the e-business strategy report.

Earlier this month, Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., British Airways PLC and U.S. technology company EyeTicket Corp. announced their own five-month trial of a self-service border passage system using iris recognition at Heathrow.

Schiphol Group NV, the operator of the Amsterdam airport, is already offering its self-service border control system with iris-recognition technology called Privium to other airports and airlines.

Developed jointly with the Dutch border police and the Dutch department of immigration and naturalization, Privium is available to nationals of countries in the European Economic Area for a yearly membership fee of $86.

In an interview with the British magazine Computing yesterday, UKPS CEO Bernard Herdan said his department is looking into such biometric technologies as iris scans, fingerprinting, palm recognition and facial scans, adding that he envisions biometric cards that would begin working in conjunction with paper passports.

Insisting that the biometric cards were "not about Big Brother," Herdan asserted that the public would be quick to embrace the ID cards due to the enhanced security the technology would offer, the magazine said.

In January, the government began issuing "entitlement cards" to asylum seekers. The cards carry such information as nationality, date of birth and family details. Identity cards and biometric passports could possibly be combined into one form of ID for all British citizens in the future, but such a card would possibly be introduced in stages, Herdan said, according to the report.

Herdan couldn't be reached for comment, and the UKPS directed all queries to the Home Office.