EFL
Britain hopes to start issuing passports storing information about the holder on computer chips within two years. It hopes to introduce passport cards with biometric information, such as an iris scan or fingerprints, by the year 2006.
| Boy, that's gonna frost the jihadis... |
However, the Home Secretary is concerned that some other major countries are lagging behind in developing the new technology. About 3,000 passports go missing in Britain every year. Most are thought to be stolen by Pakistanis, Yemenis and jihadis criminals gangs behind immigration rackets, but ministers acknowledge that they could be ending up in terrorists' hands.
| "Acknowledge" it? They should be the first to be pointing it out! |
Mr Blunkett will argue that the massive growth in travel – 90 million foreign nationals passed through the UK last year on holiday or business – increased the need for the work. Mr Blunkett will also argue that the checks can only be made truly effective if there are common standards in north America, western Europe, Japan and Russia. The passports, to be launched in 2005, would carry facial recognition data, which records details of the distance between points on the face, and a digital copy of the bearer's signature. The aim is to make it much harder to alter the document for another person. The Government has begun a pilot scheme on the use of iris recognition, which is considered to be more reliable than fingerprinting. It involved checking a group of frequent travellers at Heathrow airport against a database that stored details of their irises. Home Office sources said the trials so far have been encouraging. They also have a beneficial side-effect of freeing immigration staff to make checks on other, higher-risk groups of travellers. The feasibility of developing biometric technology – which could also be used on a national identity card – has already been discussed by Mr Blunkett and Tom Ridge, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security.
Not going to see one of those here. But for passports this might be useful. |