Biometric passports in Indonesia now PKD-certified by ICAO

Indonesia is the latest country to obtain the Public Key Directory (PKD) certificate from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for its electronic travel documents or biometric passports, writes the Jakarta Post.

Indonesia’s Immigration Director General Ronny F. Sompie received the certificate from ICAO secretary-general Fang Liu at the organization’s headquarters in Montreal last week.

The PKD is a database maintained by the ICAO used to exchange information for biometric passport authentication. ICAO is a UN agency responsible with supervising the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, and with establishing common ground on international civil aviation Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) and policies between its 193 member states.

ICAO has recently denied alleged critical privacy flaw in biometric passports identified by a group of researchers from the University of Luxemburg.

In 1998, Malaysia was the first country to adopt biometric passports, followed by 60 other countries by 2008 and 120 by 2017. However, there are only 69 countries with PKD certificates, therefore the information exchange for easier border crossing can only occur between the 69 countries.

Indonesia plans on increasing the number of offices issuing biometric passports and wants to roll out a pilot for polycarbonate-made electronic passports at four offices by the end of 2019, and across all offices by 2024.

Article Topics

authentication  |  biometric passport  |  biometrics  |  certification  |  ePassports  |  ICAO  |  identity document  |  Indonesia