Would you like a digital passport on your smartphone?
I’m sure most of you will be familiar with the frantic scrabble to find the correct documents at the airport, resulting in a mild heart attack when your passport isn’t where you thought it was. FYI, it’s probably in your back pocket.
Well, this could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a company called De La Rue, which is working on creating digital passports on your smartphone that can be used at airport immigration, making travel an entirely paperless experience.
Of course, the biggest challenge for De La Rue will be creating a solution that is acceptable for governments around the world, as significant security and anti-counterfeit measures will be required.
De La Rue chief executive Martin Sutherland told The Times that the project is a long-term one, but the company has already started working on removing the need for a physical passport.
Despite the excitement that may be felt by consumers, security professionals have been quick to warn of the potential dangers: "Most European countries have been using digital chips embedded in traditional passports for ten years with little or no impact to security, but with the introduction of a passport being associated with an internet connected device, the threat model changes significantly", said Gavin Millard, technical director with Tenable Network Security, speaking to MailOnline.
"With the recent launch of Apple Pay and Google Wallet, proving that mobile devices can be used securely for transactions though, the obvious next step in the evolution of everything digital is the paperless passport. If introduced, many will err on the side of caution and not enable this capability on their devices, but for frequent travelers convenience will probably trump security concerns".
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