E-Passports as a Means Towards the First World-Wide Public Key Infrastructure

Millions of citizens around the world have already acquired their new electronic passport. The e-passport is equipped with contactless communication capability, as well as with a smart card processor enabling cryptographic functionality. Countries are required to build a Public Key Infrastructure to support digital signatures, as this is considered the basic tool to prove the authenticity and integrity of the Machine Readable Travel Documents. The first large-scale worldwide PKI is currently under construction, by means of bilateral trust relationships between Countries. In this paper, we investigate the good practices, which are essential for the establishment of a global identification scheme based on e-passports, together with the security and privacy issues that may arise. We argue that an e-passport may also be exploited in other applications as a globally interoperable PKI-enabled tamperproof device. The preconditions, the benefits, and the drawbacks of using e-passports in everyday electronic activities are further analyzed and assessed.