DTCs bring risks, exaggerate efficiency: Digital rights groups

Digital travel credentials (DTCs) are supposed to make travel faster and more convenient but the digital documents that could soon replace passports also carry risks such as biometric surveillance and discrimination, according to digital rights groups.

The European Union is proposing regulation that would help establish a common format for digital travel documents and is currently soliciting public feedback. The first moves towards replacing passports are already underway: In October, the bloc outlined plans for an EU Digital Travel app and a common DTC framework while several countries are already conducting pilots.

Europe’s push towards DTCs, however, could put fundamental rights at risk, according to EDRi, a network of civil society organizations focusing on technology and data. The European Commission’s proposal does not contain any concrete security requirements for safeguarding biometric data, the group says.

“This would allow governments to build up a detailed picture of everyone’s travel habits and border crossings, even if there is no reasonable suspicion to justify this intrusion into people’s privacy,” the organization says. “This is deeply concerning from the perspective of disproportionate state surveillance, and also creates the possibility that hackers or other malicious actors could also access these data.”

Another qualm for EDRi is exaggerating the efficiency of DTCs. While the proposal speaks of digitizing passport and ID cards, the process is really about pre-submitting traveler information contained in existing physical documents, the organization says.

To use the DTC, people will need to install an eu-LISA app on their smartphone, scan their passport chip, and perform facial recognition with a liveness check. While official documents estimate that the registration could take up to three minutes, EDRi says that the average traveler could expect to lose more time. The digital registration will also only shave off 20 seconds during the border checks.

“For the individual traveler, it does not make a lot of sense to use a couple of minutes to scan their faces with an app, including a potentially cumbersome liveness test, and submit their sensitive biometric data to a central server, via an eu-LISA router, with all the data protection and privacy risks that entails, in order to save just 20 seconds during the border check procedure,” the group says.

Public surveys have so far shown mixed views on using DTCs. A public consultation conducted by the EU showed that DTCs were not important for 83 percent of respondents while 72 percent said that they did not believe that digital documents could facilitate the border check procedure. The consultation invited stakeholders such as EU member states’ authorities, EU agencies, industries, private citizens and more.

However, according to a 2023 survey from Eurobarometer, 68 percent of Europeans were in favor of using DTCs for travel outside the Schengen area with only 28 percent opposed. Almost half of the respondents said software failures are their most important concern.

The EU’s DTC regulation will be open for public feedback until January 8th, 2025.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital travel  |  digital travel credentials  |  eu-LISA  |  European Digital Rights (EDRi)  |  facial recognition  |  mobile app