Germany rolls out second generation of ePassport with biometrics
02 November, 2007
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Government
Germany has moved into the second generation of ePassports by adding fingerprint biometrics. Fingerprints become mandatory in June 2009, and according to NXP, which supplies the chips for the passports, it will be the first country in the world to introduce second-generation ePassports with enhanced security that are tamper-proof. The SmartMX chip in the new German ePassports supports Extended Access Control (EAC), which uses enhanced levels of security to protect the on-chip biometrics. The German system uses encryption to protect the biometric data. Germany has taken delivery of 18,000 fingerprint readers.
Read the full article here.