ePassports and Contactless IC Cards

By Joe Naujokas, Naujokas & Associates

Most of our readers are not involved in ePassports (also called eMRP or electronic machine readable passport), however, the ongoing work on ePassports will have a positive effect on the use of Contactless IC Cards (CICC). The ePassport uses the ISO/IEC 14443 CICC and ISO/IEC 7816 IC Card standards.

Also, some ePassport production methods will be a plastic ID3 size card, integrated into the traditional passport book. Thus, the technologies used to create the card portion will be the same as used to produce ID1 plastic cards.

Many of the obstacles resolved in the ePassport development will therefore apply to the ID-1 card business as well. The economies of scale will be boosted by ePassports as it is estimated there are 600 million passports worldwide.

In May of 2003, the minimum ePassport requirements were defined by ICAO1. The ePassport consists of the traditional requirements – photo, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), name and number – with the new requirements of contactless IC’s to carry personal identification data including facial image biometrics.

The USA, by law last year, required all Visa exempt countries to begin issuing ePassports by October 26, 2004. Most were skeptical that this was possible and predicted that the schedule would be changed. Sure enough, a new law was passed to extend the date for another year. Mind you, the US State Department wanted a two year extension but the lawmakers decided on a one year extension to keep the pressure on. Trials of the new ePassport in leading countries, using state department personnel, are expected to start shortly.

Also, there were some reader compatibility problems uncovered when vendors began demonstrating compatibility with the CICC. It turns out there were some major problems in understanding how the CICC interface really works. So ICAO brought all the vendors together in Morgantown, West Virginia to sort out the problems. As a result, a report was issued that detailed 23 problems of which all were resolved except one relative to the ISO/IEC14443 standard. There were some ambiguities on how to use certain “Reserved for Future Use (RFU) bits. The ISO WG8 standards group will take this issue under considera tion. It is expected that the resolution will consist of more information on how to properly use the RFU.

Downloading of biometric data from the card can take anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds. This issue is primarily a reader issue although chip operating systems can contribute as well. Throughput of passengers is a main concern of ICAO, so expect that this problem will also be resolved.

Testing is now receiving considerable attention from ICAO, both on the functional and durability viewpoints. Currently, a WG3 task force is working on this but support from the other SC17 Working Groups will be needed to develop a complete set of test methods.

Up until the ePassport application, CICC was used in closed systems so many of these problems were not apparent. The ePassport is the first major open system to use contactless IC Cards in a demanding environment. ICAO is giving our industry a huge benefit to resolve the problems with schedule pressures on this sizeable market. If it were not for ICAO, the industry would be doing more posturing than working to resolve the problems of implementing CICC in an open system. What do you think?

The International Civil Aviation Organization who has responsibility for ePassport specifications ICAO 9303, has been using the expertise of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC17 WG3 for machine readable passports since 1998. WG3 advises ICAO, liaises with other rSC17 WG’s and prepares technology reports. ICAO makes the decisions and publishes the specifications. WG3 reviews and endorses the ICAO 9303 through its standard ISO/IEC 7501.