Security Layer
We ourselves are the best protection
Soon the biometric data of their owners will be actively used in the documents
Different means of mass media proclaimed that since the 1st of April in Russia there would be new foreign passports introduced.
But it was not true completely- all innovative features included the fact of laminating the page with personal data of the owners on the usual forms of foreign passports. Meanwhile, absolutely new passports, where all up-to-date world tendencies will be taken under account, including biometric information, will be implemented soon. Due to the words of representatives of Ministry of Internal Affairs, there is a plan to start producing these passports since 2006 already.
They speak actively about introducing inside Russian electronic identity cards.
How will it look like?
What is doing in the direction just now?
For getting comments "Watermark" addressed Anatoley Gubarev, the head of the sector of protective technologies of instrumental-technological department of Scientific institute of Goznak
— Why did Russia appear at the end of high-technological countries line, introducing and ready to introduce plastic identity cards?
— In this case, it"s not worth stressing on Russian technological lagging in the points of introducing radio-frequency electronic technologies for identification of personality. Developing in this field is new not only for us but for the rest world. Necessity in introducing such technologies appeared together with suddenly sharpened situation in the world, connected with rising activity of terrorist organizations. So leading countries of the world association began seeking the methods of control under moving people, especially while crossing the borders. So, the requirements for passport-visa control became stricter and, accordingly, the time, necessary for carrying out this control enlarged, causing serious troubles for passengers and controlling organs.
One of the ways to solve these rising problems is introducing control with the help of noncontact radio-frequency identity cards, installing into usual transport documents. The similar smart cards are wide spread now both abroad and in our country. These are credit and bank cards (Visa, Master Card and others), transport cards in subway. In Moscow there is "a card of Muscovite" and many others, allowing to have inventory of financial operations and to get certain benefits. In many institutions noncontact cards of access are used, providing passing through tourniquets at the passage ways.
The particular feature of the cards, offered for introduction into passport-visa documents, is the nature of the information, which is supposed to record into the memory of the card. For carrying out successful identification of personalities it is planned to introduce biometric information into the card. This is information about fingers" prints, iris of eyes, representation of a face.
It is necessary to make more precise that the matter is in entering this identification information into not usual Russian passports, which have been brought into circulation just now, but into foreign passports, the analogue of which are called as "transport cards" in many countries.
— Is there an equal international conception of the standard of recording on a chip and content of this information?
— No, there is not any equal decision about the information and the way to record on a chip. Previous tests showed that it would take about 30 kilobytes of storage for recording necessary biometric information. However it is supposed to record not representations themselves, but signatures or samples, e.g. their characteristic parameters, on which quantity and ways to choose reliability of recognizing representations depends.
The people, who worry that their imprints will be recorded on chips, have no reasons for troubles: the imprint itself will not be kept on the card. Bit it will contain the information, which the special program can decode and compare with decoding other imprints, being kept in the data base.
The most obvious is the fact that not the iris of eyes but fingers will be chosen. Some facts inform that in Russia there is a base for fingers" imprints of more than 10 million people.
No technical difficulties on the way are foreseen- there is proper equipment abroad, Russian enterprises are ready to draw it up and produce. The only question, appearing while having this plan, is if there will be enough money for wide-spreading introducing equipment and software.
— Will the software and equipment be from abroad?
— Naturally, microcircuits of leading foreign firms will be used. They are used all over the world, moreover, no one Russian company is still producing these microcircuits-chips.
— Can it influence the informative security of Russia?
— Perhaps, no. But the questions, connected with confidentiality of recorded information, possibility of access to it and its rerecording, are existing. However, while using modern microcircuits, the questions are easy to solve.
Yelena Kiseleva
