NST - 5 July 2007 - E-passport pride of Malaysian technology By : Azura Abas
Two years before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, the United States immigration inspectors came across something they had never seen before — a passport with a chip embedded in it. It was a Malaysian passport, which carried a digital photograph and fingerprints of the holder. The world’s first electronic passport, it baffled the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) and its laboratory staff, said author and consultant Neville Cramer. At the time, he was still serving as special agent in charge of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, under the US Department of Justice.
"Inspectors came to me and said this passport is the finest thing we have ever seen. The best in the world," he said in an interview. Then two jetliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001, hijacked by men who used fake passports to enter the US. The Sept 11 attacks triggered a desperate search by governments around the world for the right technology to make travel and identity documents more secure.
In 2003, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) set new standards for passports, including the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) microchips. The Malaysian RFID chip, which allows contactless operations of smart cards, was developed by local MSC-status company Iris Corporation Bhd.
Despite concerns that the chips could be cloned, information encoded into Malaysian passports has so far remained secure. Digital keys stored on each chip made such duplication and forgery impossible, according to a company statement last year. Iris has gone on to supply its technology for smart cards and passports to a number of countries, including Turkey and New Zealand.
But almost a decade after Malaysia launched its e-passport, the US, which issued its first e-passport early last year, is still trying to get it right. Cramer, who headed the first INS field test of Malaysia’s e-passport, believes that the US should adopt Malaysia’s technology. "To this day, (the US) has not done it right. The chip stores a photo of the holder but not his fingerprints. It is mind-boggling that they have not utilised (Malaysian) technology fully," said Cramer, on a recent visit here to meet Home Affairs Ministry officials.
Since retiring in 2002, Cramer has written a book, Fixing the INSanity, on some of the causes of America’s immigration problems. He has also started a consultancy called Immigration Enforcement Solutions. When Cramer first came here for the INS field test, the team he led ordered 19 machines to read Malaysian passports. Within a week, they saw for themselves how well the passport’s security features worked.
A man had presented a Malaysian passport, but the reader showed a woman’s face in the digitised photograph contained in the chip, he said. The photograph on the physical document had been replaced, but the one stored on the chip could not be tampered with. "He confessed that he bought the forged passport from a smuggler."
Sadly, Malaysia lost the chance in 2003 to help set world standards on e-passports, he said. "The government should have gone to the UN, which oversees the ICAO, to tell everyone that Malaysia has already done it. "Malaysians are not getting the credit for what they have accomplished."
Partly, it’s because European and American technology giants cannot accept that a small country like Malaysia had beaten them to it. "So they downplayed what Malaysia has," said Cramer.
Indeed, Malaysia is well ahead of the rest of the world.
E-passports, he said, are the only way to speed up clearance times at immigration points and border controls, especially with air travel on the rise around the world. "The world has to start embracing the use of e-passports."
Hmmm .. too bad ... Giant countries and giant companies do not come with GIANT HONESTY AND INTEGRITY ... they still think size of the country matters ... hmmph .. aiyaa.. tak tau lah ... |