Session: Beyond ePassports and national eIDs…

Speech title: Beyond e-Passports: A versatile, low-cost “ICAO-lite” alternative for mainstream ID applications

The e-Passort launched the market for electronic ID about ten years ago when the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standard for travel documents based on contactless chip technology was adopted, and since then it has gained wide acceptance with more than 100 countries committed to its use so far. But although the benefits of the ICAO standard for identity applications are undeniable, ICAO-compliant chips are too costly and too slow to be used for more mainstream e-ID applications. Further, because their memory is fixed and sealed at issuance and cannot be altered, standard ICAO implementations cannot support points, counters, date flags and other kinds of data that change during the lifecycle of most ID document. With driving licenses, healthcare cards, electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, residence permits, vehicle IDs and other mainstream ID applications soon to represent 80 to 90 percent of the contactless ID chip market, there is tremendous potential for high-performance, cost-effective solution that can leverage the current ICAO ecosystem while providing the flexibility to add value to e-ID documents.

By leveraging the economies of scale that contactless microprocessors in the banking industry enjoy, it is now possible to create cost-effective, “ICAO-Lite” solutions. While they comply with standard ICAO logical data structures, coding and signing schemes, ICAO-Lite solutions are able to partition the microprocessor memory between ICAO’s fixed, static demographic data, which is signed with the issuer’s secret key, and other variable data outside the perimeter of the sign data, opening the door to an endless number of value-added application possibilities.

Attendees will learn the difference between standard ICAO dual interface and contactless solutions and the new ICAO-Lite technology, and the range of new capabilities that are now possible. This presentation will also provide examples of how the technology is currently being used for border car registration and driver licenses, visas and weapon permits is different countries.