OTTAWA — As early as next year, Canadians who apply for passports will receive documents with chips that contain their digital images and personal information such as name, gender, and date and place of birth.
Passport Canada says the new electronic passports, known as e-passports, will increase security, provide greater protection against tampering and reduce the risk of fraud.
But they’ve also raised concerns about privacy, identity theft, misidentification and the growth of government surveillance of citizens.
“I am not reassured that the passport office has adequately addressed the many concerns,” said Andrew Clement, a professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.
Full assurance, he said, “would require a thorough, expert and independent assessment with public reporting of all but the necessarily confidential aspects. As far as I know, nothing close to this has been done.”
The plan to introduce e-passports in 2011 — valid for 10 years instead of the current five — was announced in the 2008 budget, and re-announced in this month’s throne speech this month.
While 70 per cent of Canadians have passports, 82 per cent are unaware that the introduction of the electronic documents is imminent, according to findings of a survey conducted for Passport Canada.
That could soon start to change. Within the next couple of weeks, Passport Canada will begin a major online consultation with Canadians about its service, spokesman Jean-Sebastien Roy said yesterday.
After the results have been analyzed, the agency will consult Canadians again — this time focusing on the introduction of the new e-passport. Only then will its cost and date of implementation be determined, said Roy.
It’s even conceivable its introduction could be delayed until 2012, Roy said. “Everything depends on the consultations.”
Still, Passport Canada is keen to proceed. More than 60 countries already have e-passports — including every member of the G7 except Canada. The International Civil Aviation Organization recommended the adoption of e-passports in 2005.
“The transition to the e-passport will have a certain cost,” Roy acknowledged. “But the cost of falling behind other countries is much greater.”
Under a pilot project that started in January 2009, Passport Canada has already issued 25,000 diplomatic and special e-passports. “So far, no difficulties have been reported,” Roy said.
To address concerns raised by Canada’s privacy commissioner, Passport Canada backed away last year from the idea of including fingerprints and iris scans in the e-passport.
But “we continue to be very interested in this issue,” said Anne-Marie Hayden, spokeswoman for the privacy commissioner.
The commissioner’s office expects to receive an updated report on the national rollout of the e-passport in the next few weeks, she said.
“We plan to look at that report carefully to determine whether . . . we have any outstanding concerns or questions from a privacy perspective.”
As it stands, the only biometric element on the “proximity contactless chip” embedded in the passport’s back cover will be the holder’s photo.
That will let border authorities use facial recognition technology to compare the photo on the chip to watchlists of known terrorists and criminals.
Passport Canada touts this as a security enhancement. But facial recognition technology isn’t accurate enough to be used for “one-to-many” matching, Clement said.
“There will be higher numbers of wrongful matches, which could be inconveniencing — or worse — for the people involved,” he said, adding: “The passport office should provide some real evidence that it would work.”
WSG (Fototrips) Posting news of interest from around the world relating to travel and photography.
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