Beijing's passports go biometric

Beijing will officially begin issuing biometric passports on May 15, in a move to stamp out counterfeiting and to improve national security.

"The biggest difference to the old one is that there's an electronic chip, which will contain information like fingerprints, photographs and the signature, embedded in the back cover," said Lin Song, media officer from the Beijing Exit-Entry Administration.

The Ministry of Public Security announced on May 3 that the passport project has been under preparation for three years. The passports were first trialed in Jinan, Shandong Province, before the nationwide rollout.

According to the press release from the local exit-entry administration, the passports use advanced anti-counterfeiting technologies, such as special ink and holographic images.

The ministry said that as more than 90 countries have adopted biometric passports, China has "felt the need to introduce new technologies in maintaining State security and facilitating the citizens' traveling abroad."

Passport fraud is now one of the most worrying security threats to international travel, said Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble at the 2011 International Air Traffic Association (IATA) annual general meeting in Singapore, according to an Interpol press release in June 2011.

An Interpol database has records of almost 28 million stolen and lost passports from 158 countries, Noble said.

"These passports are being used, fraudulently altered and given to terrorists, war criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers," Noble told The Associated Press in a January 2010 interview.

Chinese university student, Yu Junhua, 24, was this week jailed for 12 months in the UK for identity fraud, after he fraudulently attended English language examinations on behalf of other Chinese nationals, according to a report on MailOnline yesterday. Police discovered six counterfeit passports in the Cambridge University architecture student's closet, all bearing his photograph, but with a different name in each one of them.

In some countries, which have already introduced biometric passports, there have been concerns as to the vulnerability of the techniques used to produce the passports, and also whether the system may be open to abuse of private information.

Germany was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce use of the biometric passport in November 2005, and security experts said that technique to produce the passports was not flawless, according to a BBC report in 2005.

"The authorities will ensure the safety of information contained in the chips, and strict protective measures will be imposed on the reading of the data, especially for fingerprints," said Lin.

According to the press release, the finger print data can only be extracted through decoding devices used by police and border control authorities.

In a move to clamp down on the widespread trade in personal information, the public security ministry last month arrested 1,700 people. Most were employees from financial institutions, telecommunication companies or other organizations with extensive personal databases, local media reported on April 26.

"Sure, ordinary citizens like us don't have the skills to access the central database, but aren't the traders of our personal information the staff inside companies?" said Hu Yin, a local resident working for a communications company, referring to the April arrests.

There will be no extra charge for the new document, said Lin, and citizens will not need to apply until their current passport expires, as normal. Applicants will need to give fingerprints and an electronic signature in front of police.

"With the extra information in the chip, there won't be a problem any longer if a person's looks have changed due to having had extensive cosmetic surgery. We've had several cases where people were barred from reentering the country after coming back from South Korea," said Lin.