ePassport round-upLack of readers delays ePassport roll-out
Although more than thirty countries have begun issuing the documents, few have installed (or turned on) the neccesary readers; many wait for market saturization, but often governments are to blame for failing to develop proper privacy regulations
The ePassport movement is more popular than ice cream at a picnic, but it seems that somebody has forgotten to bring the spoons. According to Joel Shaw of the International Organization for Standardization, despite the fact that more that thirty countries are already issuing the biometric-based documents, few countries have installed the readers neccesary to take advantage of them. “To realize the full value of this, one needs to deploy the technology and get it working at the border,” said Shaw. “Most countries are not doing it. The next focus (should be), let’s start getting deployment (of readers) out there to reap the value.”
Of all countries involved, perhaps the United States is furthest ahead with thirty American airports now featuring the contactless readers and tens of thousands of ePassports processed. Where other countries are lagging, the reason is often the feeling that it would be a waste of time fully to deploy the readers before the ePassports have saturated the market. In other cases, privacy concerns have stalled the development of the neccesary procedures. In Germany, for instance, more than 600 card readers have been installed, but all of them have been laying dormant while lawmakers haggle over legislation regulating how police handle the sensitive data located on the document.
-read more in this Card Technology report
