Social development has been very rapid, and many of the things that have to go backward have been eliminated. For example, the most direct future payment may become mobile payment. Alipay will go all over the world. Later children will not know that there is money in real life. However, some things are kept in the most primitive form, such as paper passports, such as marriage certificates.
A friend of mine went to Australia last year, and there was no stamp on his passport. This is not an accident, nor is it due to the negligence of the customs. In fact, the entry process of the Australian Customs standard no longer needs to be sealed.
Before leaving New York, he applied for an e-visa online; after arriving at his destination, he took a picture on a machine at the border and verified the e-visa.
Although he still had to insert his passport into the machine, this step seemed redundant. Most of the steps in this process are done through electronic channels, and I can't help wondering: Why are we still using paper passports?
It's really inconvenient to carry a paper passport with you.
Fingerprints, retina scans and other biometric technologies can quickly identify someone by biometrics. At present, we have begun to use these technologies to unlock mobile phones, and in the near future, we may use them to pay for coffee for breakfast. In this case, can we scan a part of the body instead of cumbersome paper passports?
You know, millions of passports are stolen every year. Interpol has set up a database of stolen passports, the earliest of which dates back to 2002; they say there are now more than 50 million records in the database. What's more, fake passports have become a big problem in the European Union, with thousands of immigrants trying to infiltrate Europe from war zones like Syria with stolen passports or forged files.
If we abandon paper passports and use biometrics to identify people, can we solve these problems? It's not so simple.
Retina data stolen, a new eyeball?
One reason governments may be reluctant to switch to biometrics for authentication is that the information can be easily hacked. 3D printing of artificial fingers can easily deceive fingerprint scanners. It is not difficult to black out a retinal scanner. Even face recognition technology is far from infallible.
Another question is, where should we store these data? At present, there are more than 125 million valid passports issued by the United States. To create a cloud database to store so many e-passports, it requires astronomical budget, let alone efforts to protect it from hackers.
The more serious problem is that if your fingerprint or retina data is stolen, the government can't send you a new finger or a new eyeball. So what should these citizens do?
Professor X's retina data has been stolen more than once.
It is undoubtedly short-sighted to place the security of the global passport system on these relatively new technologies, because they may bring more problems than they can solve.
Especially in some big countries, the bureaucracy responsible for issuing passports is very large. In 2015 alone, the United States issued more than 15.5 million passports and passport cards. To replace the existing system with a new passport free system requires not only great efforts, but also professional cooperation.
In addition, passports in many countries have adopted quite advanced technology. Since 2005, many countries have issued "biometric passports" with a circular mark on the cover. Biometric passports, also known as' e-passports', store some biometric information that can be used to identify passengers.
The passport uses contactless smart card technology (so the self-service machine in the airport can read the information on the passport), with a microchip built in. The passport holder's information is not only printed next to the photo, but also stored in the chip. These characteristics make it more difficult to forge biometric passports. At present, the United States, Australia, the European Union, Brazil, Cambodia and other places have begun to use this passport.
In some countries, biometric passports also store fingerprint, iris scanning data and other information, but this is not common. In the United States, biometric scanning has even entered the visa application process.
'I have to emphasize that there are more than one kind of biometric passport. Each country can design, manufacture and issue its own passport, or entrust the design and manufacturing work to a private company. "Said William Walters, Professor of political science and Sociology / Anthropology at the University of Carlton in Canada. Professor Walters has written a lot about citizenship.
William cocks, a spokesman for the Consular Department of the State Department, told me that the new passports have curbed the momentum of passport forgery, but he did not disclose specific data.
Will embedded chips be our future?
The awkwardness of passports reflects an important problem: we don't know how to connect the electronic world with the real world. Although electronic elements have appeared in passports, the parts belonging to entities are still indispensable. It may take a long time for us to get rid of the entity's identification completely.
One day, the development of embedded chips may eventually replace passports. In January 2016, a Dutch technology entrepreneur successfully boarded the flight in Stockholm using an embedded chip. A Swedish company has begun using subcutaneous chips (optional) to identify employees. But for many people, the future of the government's implanting of chips into citizens is too dystopian to escape the suspicion of tracking and monitoring.
The device implanted in the body inevitably reminds many people of some anti Utopian plots.
Australia has begun to test a virtual passport, where passengers' information will be stored remotely on a cloud server. When the system is put into use, Australians can go to partner countries (currently only New Zealand) without worrying about losing paper passports.
I asked Walters if there would be a paperless system in other countries, and he replied that it would be possible, but it would be difficult for the system to be universal. He told me that richer countries are more likely to introduce paperless passports.
Currently, passport standards are controlled by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a member of the United Nations. In 2015, ICAO standardized the format of machine readable passports and biometric passports in the revised version of document 9303. In the future, if we really want to replace paper passports with embedded chips and other things, it is likely that ICAO will dominate the conversion.
Whatever ultimately replaces passports, it must strike a balance between reliability, security and human rights.
In the future, I think I will still present this paper passport when I stand in line for inspection.