UAE signs for high-tech electronic passports

Bundesdruckerei is to support production of about one million electronic passports for the UAE. Bundesdruckerei's CEO Ulrich Hamann said: "The UAE’s decision to entrust Bundesdruckerei with production of its electronic passports and provision of the corresponding system components shows how much trust customers throughout the world place in our competency and technological potential".

The passports are biometrical IDs complying with the ICAO standards and therefore meet the highest security demands.

In practice, this means that the ePassports, comparable to their German counterparts, will have a chip in the cover on which a facial image and two fingerprints of the owner are stored, thus ensuring better protection of the owner's identity.

With this contract, Bundesdruckerei will be operating as sub-contactor to the local systems integrator "Emirates Computers" and will be responsible for several steps of the production process, ranging from data capture to issuing and verification of the documents. The paper passports - containing a data sheet coated with high-security holographic laminate - are produced in Berlin. Back home in the United Arab Emirates, Bundesdruckerei has been entrusted with equipping the Ministry of Interior with modern personalisation technology for the documents and providing data capture and output systems to the competent authorities. Apart from a software package these systems will also include hardware components such as passport printers and reading devices.

The company has already had a presence in the UAE having delivered some   700 Visotec passport reading along the borders of the UAE.