Australia Plans to Ditch Paper Passport
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During a recent diplomacy-focused hackathon an all-digital passport was proposed. Currently, Australians have had access to ePassposrts since 2005. An ePassport functions as an upgraded version of the old-fashioned paper document. It is fitted with a small electronic chip, used to store information on the passport holder – including a photo, name, sex, and passport number.
ePassports allow travellers to pass through automated border control stations with no human interaction. This automated process greatly increases efficiency in a travel bottleneck, reducing queueing times and eliminating time spent talking to border control agents.
The new, fully-digital version has been endorsed by Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop. It would include obfuscated identity and biometrics data, stored online and downloaded by customs agents worldwide as and when required. Cloud-based passports would simply take information already present in physical ePassports and move it to a centralised server, eliminating the need for a paper copy.
In light of the recent spate of data breaches, privacy and security concerns are on everyone’s minds. Ms Bishop seeked to assuage concerns, saying: “Australia prides itself on having one of the most secure passports in the world, but by embracing and harnessing new technologies, we might be able to do better.”
Australia is in “discussions with New Zealand and if we’re able to put in place the appropriate requirements, including security, then it’s something we’d like to trial and implement,” Ms Bishop went on to say. If successful, the trial could expand from New Zealand to the entire world.
The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, however, claims a passport-free travel system has only been discussed with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs at the “conceptual level,” with no concrete plans to implement the proposal agreed upon.
It seems for now, the privacy conscious and digitally averse can sleep easy. But the all-digital future is not far off. We can only hope security will be taken as seriously as Ms Bishop claims it will be.
