In the wake of terrorist attacks across the world, governments have considered introducing ID cards that include biometric identifiers like fingerprints, iris scans— eye impression, or face scans.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, an UN organization responsible for the standardization of travel documents has been researching biometric passports since 1995.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) will shortly introduce biometric passports with features like thumb and iris scan of the passport holder embedded in the passport.

Initially, Indian passports will carry only the thumb impression and the iris scan images will be added later. Passport officials also said that charges for biometric passports would be increased from the existing Rs.1000.

To the question, as to how much would the passport charge be increased to, the Deputy Secretary, MEA refused to disclose. Normally one has to pay a fee to receive a new passport, but under the new system a new passport can be obtained free of charge when applied within one year from the date of information change. That’s key, as the price of passports will go up to cover the cost of the new technology.

The Indian government is willing to invest in connecting the district passport cells, regional passport offices and offices of commissioners of police through a network of computers and Internet. This, however, is subject to the success of the decentralization scheme. As per the scheme, district passport centers were introduced a couple of years ago in the country. Under the scheme, around 400 of the 500-odd districts in the country have passport cells at the district level.

According to the U.S. State Department’s proposed implementation rule, the agency plans to issue the first biometric passport carrying an RFID chip by 2005. The technical working group assessing these technologies includes India. RFID, short for Radio Frequency Identification, is a new transponder technology for the contactless recognition of objects. One of the primary concerns with using RFID chips in the new passports is that the chips can be read from a distance.

Some privacy experts allege that the RFID chips can be read from as far away as 30 to 65 feet with proper equipment. Looks like there are a lot of challenges ahead for biometric passports to be implemented.