France has begun issuing electronic passports
that will allow its citizens to travel to the United States without
a visa, according to Amsterdam-based Axalto.
The smart-card vendor is providing France's
printing office, the Imprimerie Nationale, with approximately 2
million electronic covers for the new passports this year.
The e-passports include smart cards containing the holderb s
personal information and a biometric identifier, and will first be
issued in a district of Paris. Their use will be extended to
citizens in the rest of France by the end of May, Axalto
said.
b By delivering these new e-passports to the
French government, Imprimerie Nationale has been especially
responsive in implementing the new technologies required for a
modern administrative France,b said Loic Lenoir de la Cochetiere,
Chairman and CEO of Imprimerie Nationale SA.
The new travel documents use Axaltob s e-passport
technology, Axseal -- a highly secure operating system with
encryption algorithms that work on a contactless chip incorporated
into the passportb s cover, the company said. In addition to the
identity information contained on the first page of the document,
the chip features the passport holderb s digitized photo, Axalto
said.
b You have an electronic copy inside a chip that
canb t be tampered with or altered and the access to it is
controlled with various security mechanisms so the privacy of the
passport holder is maintained,b said Neville Pattinson, Axaltob s
director of Technology & Government Affairs.
Under the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, visitors
from 27 mostly European countries, including France, need biometric
data encoded in their passport if it was issued after October 2005
and they want to travel to the U.S. without a visa, Pattinson said.
By the end of October, all countries in the visa-waiver program
must produce chip-enabled, biometrically enhanced passports,
Pattinson said. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will
install document readers that read the e-passports at United States
ports of entry.
France joins a handful of other countries,
including Japan, Sweden and Australia that are issuing these
e-passports before the deadline. The U.S. expects to issue its own
electronic passports by the end of the year.
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