to complete the picture of the passenger so that the immigration officer can make an informed decision as to whether s/ he will be allowed to proceed beyond the border or be subjected to additional more intensive controls as part of their risk assessment procedures.


Understanding this, we need to step back from current practices and ask ourselves, if establishing document authenticity and using passenger data for risk assessment is so vital for the border control authorities (particularly from an inbound perspective, after the passenger has flown from A to B), why are we not doing the same at the aviation security checkpoint before the passenger boards the aircraft in the first place?


IATA Checkpoint of the Future The good news is that many of the building blocks required to support this shift from detection to identification are now in place. There is also a growing interest in using passenger data as a trigger for conducting a real-time risk assessment at the checkpoint – the result of which will determine how the passenger is screened.


While it is fair to say that there were some obvious gaps in the original Checkpoint of the Future concept, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) is to be applauded for the work the Association continues to take forward. The next critical step will be to transform the concept into a workable model that can ultimately be deployed across the globe and take the industry considerably further in its pursuit of a smart, intelligence-led, outcome-focused and results-based set of procedures that enhance security, increase throughput and improve the passenger experience. While there are a great many details to work out, particularly with regard to how the real- time risk assessment will be generated, the IATA Checkpoint of the Future concept brings with it the very real promise of “passenger differentiation” whereby passengers are screened according to [perceived] levels of risk, rather than according to universally applied regulatory criteria.


Halt! Who goes there? In support of IATA’s work for the Checkpoint of the Future, AUGMENTIQ undertook a series of analytical studies looking at “Data Integration” on the one hand; and “Known Traveller Programmes” on the other. As evidenced throughout both studies, ‘document verification’ is a vital requirement. Regrettably, document verification has, in many instances, been reduced to a simple name match between the document and


June 2012 Aviationsecurityinternational


One vision of IATA's Checkpoint of the Future the boarding pass.


Often, the validity of


the document isn’t checked and, all too often, the document presented at check- in is not the same one presented at the departure gate.


To be clear, this is not


document verification; at best it is a simple check to determine that the passenger is in possession of a travel document and boarding pass bearing the same name. By definition, document verification demands that the authenticity of the document be verified; that the entire document be free of forgery and tampering; and for the holder of the document to be confirmed as the rightful holder. Even today, with the proliferation of full-page document reading devices installed in self-service kiosks and at various other steps in the passenger journey, there remains confusion as to the functional difference between scanners that “read” documents and those that “verify” them.


Documentation Control: Read vs. Verify While in most instances full-page document readers are capable of verifying document authenticity, the devices nonetheless need to be configured to perform this function. At the most basic level, full-page readers scan the document, extract the passenger’s biographic data from either the machine readable zone (MRZ) or the visible zone (VIZ) of an ID card or passport conforming to the internationally accepted ICAO 9303 standard. At a basic level, a simple algorithm using the document’s biographic data will determine if the ‘checksum reference’ in the machine readable zone is correct. But for the document to be properly verified, additional controls need to be carried out.


The document


reading device (hardware) can be interfaced with a dynamically updated control library of specimen documents (software).


Quickly establishing, for example, that the document to be verified is 1) a passport; 2) an Irish Passport; and 3) an Irish Passport issued in July 2006; enables the software to call up the library of key security features for that specific document and, in real-time, verify the authenticity of the document being presented – features such as ultraviolet (UV) responsiveness (e.g. planchettes, fluorescent hi-lites, UV reactive ink etc.), watermarks, and also the verification of additional features such as Diffractive Optically Variable Imaging Devices (DOVIDS), retro- reflective devices, laminates etc.


“…there are exceptionally few instances of passenger document data being captured or used at the screening checkpoint…”


At this more complex level, the authenticity of the data page of the document is verified, proving that the document is genuine, is not a counterfeit, and has not been falsified or tampered with in any discernible way.


This


is clearly an improvement on the simple “name-matching” process that establishes that the boarding pass and document presented are both issued to a person of that name. However, this is only a partial solution. Passports verified as genuine can still contain counterfeit or forged visas. Or the document and the visa may be genuine; they just don’t belong to the passenger (imposter) presenting them.


And in the


rush of activity that typifies most boarding procedures at the departure gate, it is not at all uncommon for “lookalikes” to present a genuine travel document as their own – and get away with it.


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