Algeria launches biometric passports

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Algeria launches biometric passports

2012-01-13

Officials say the new documents will boost security and border control.

By Lyes Aflou for Magharebia in Algiers – 13/01/12

[Lyes Aflou] The first recipients of Algeria's new biometric passport show their identity documents to the press.

[Lyes Aflou] The first recipients of Algeria's new biometric passport show their identity documents to the press.

Algeria just issued its long-awaited biometric passports.

"The work of producing biometric passports is part of the process of modernising the administration and improving the security of documents needed by Algerian citizens for their daily lives," Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said at the January 4th launch ceremony.

The high-tech Algeria biometric passport contains an electronic chip with information about the holder, including a digitised photograph, fingerprints and signature.

In 2009, when the expected launch of the document was pushed back until 2010, Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said the passports would give Algeria an extra tool in the fight against "terrorism, illegal immigration and various forms of organised crime".

"Biometrics make it possible to identify a person by scanning – just like a computer – a physical characteristic which is unique to that person, such as their iris, retina, the shape of their hand or their face etc., and this brings a very high level of security," explained terror expert Faycal Oukaci.

"The chip incorporated into a passport or visa will make it possible immediately to identify the person and to reveal the slightest addition or falsification introduced to the travel document," Oukaci said, adding that the new passports will help "get rid of the loopholes" in traditional identity documents.

A security source close to the directorate of national security said criminal and terror networks have been exploiting the old documents. "The Algerian passport, like all traditional passports, is easy to falsify," the source said. Thanks to the forged passport, a large number of terrorists have found it easy to travel all over the world, the security official said.

A biometric passport cannot be falsified, forged or cloned, thanks to the combination of physical and digital security measures. The new passport is based on a special birth certificate (12S) and helps the country meet international security standards on international civil aviation.

The progressive roll-out of biometric passports should be completed by the end of 2012, according to the agreed timetable. The current passport will continue to be issued in its present form and will remain valid until 24 November 2015 (the last date on which travel documents which cannot be read by machine can be used).

Ould Kablia said that the operation was complex and had needed to be thoroughly researched, with an analysis of the experiences of a number of countries which had already followed the same path.

The minister was pleased to say that all the work of finalising and monitoring the project had been carried out by young Algerians who had received special training.

He said the digital passport would be produced by the National Centre for the Production of Secure Documents, located in Dar El-Beida (east of Algiers), which is linked to the various Dairas by a broadband network, over which the passport data is sent back to the Daira where the application was received.

The government representative announced a new centre would be created in the south of the country, in Laghouat, with access to the same database as the one in Dar El-Beida, so that the archives can be preserved if one of the sites should experience problems.

Following on from the biometric passport, a national identity card will be produced, and then biometric driving licences and registration documents.

The general secretary at the interior ministry, Abdelkader Ouali, explained that the cost of setting up the centre to produce secure documents in Dar El-Beida had reached 2 billion dinars. The centre produces 6,000 biometric passports a day and operates for eight hours a day, he added. He explained that it takes somewhere between 15 and 20 days to issue the new travel document.

This content was commissioned for Magharebia.com.

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See the TSA, they are updating requirements for name use and biometrics also.