Indonesia has officially entered the electronic age of travel, albeit a few years behind other countries, with the launch on Wednesday of an e-passport that the government claims cannot be forged. “Today, we launched the e-passport. This is to anticipate forgery,” Justice and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar told reporters at the House of Representatives.
The use of e-passports, or biometric passports, is mandatory by 2015 for countries that are members of the International Civil Aviation Organization. In Indonesia, though, the documents are being used on a trial basis. Though Patrialis said the launch was not related to the recent illicit overseas jaunts of graft convict Gayus Tambunan, who used a fake passport, he said it would certainly help prevent similar occurrences. “The e-passport is very sophisticated and is very difficult to be forged because there is a special chip in it,” he said.
The e-passport has an electronic chip containing the bearer’s personal data embedded inside the book for a more accurate identification process. Maroloan Barimbing, spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration in the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, told the Jakarta Globe that the chip offered strict security that would be difficult to copy or tamper with. “The e-passports definitely have multiple protection factors, we will have a more secure condition in immigration,” he said. The downside of the increased security, though, is the cost. Maroloan said the price would be triple the current amount.
A 48-page e-passport costs Rp 655,000 ($72) compared to Rp 255,000 ($28) for the current one.
For the 24-page passport, the price tag for the electronic one is Rp 405,000, while the current format is only Rp 105,000.
The e-passports, he said, are currently only available in immigration offices in Central Jakarta, West Jakarta and Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, and that each application for the new passports would be processed in approximately four days. So far, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are among the countries in Southeast Asia that have started issuing e-passports. A number of nations in other parts of the world have already adopted the system. “But we will not force people to change their passport yet. It remains an option for everyone and the current book passports are still valid. People do not have to worry,” Maroloan said.
IT security expert Yono Reksoprodjo said that while the e-passport’s special chip might be difficult to forge, it was not impossible for an individual to obtain another passport with a different set of personal data. “The personal bio data, such as eyes and fingerprints or dental records, holds the key to preventing an individual from having more than one passport since those data cannot be forged,” he said. Without a database that can be used as a reference to verify that the data contained in the chip is the same as the person presenting the e-passport, though, it is still possible for an individual to have more than one passport or identity card issued from a different immigration office, Yono said. “The problem is that we don’t yet have an established single identity number system which could serve as the data reference for an individual,” Yono said.
The government announced last year that it would roll out such a plan by issuing an electronic identity cards starting this year, but it has not yet been implemented. Maroloan said the ministry would conduct an evaluation of the new e-passport system sometime later this year.
Quoted from http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/new-indonesian-e-passports-will-eliminate-forgery-govt/419281
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