Well the Identity and Passport Service has rolled out it’s new Passport design.
Now we’ll do the spin from IPS then we’ll rip it apart…
The new 10 year passport will be issued from October,
- The paages of the passport containing well-known UK scenes, including the White Cliffs of Dover, the Gower Peninsula, Ben Nevis and the Giant’s Causeway – well lets face it – it’s got to be better than the birds in the current design.
- The use of these images, recreated through special printing techniques, is just one of a number of enhanced security features contained in the passport, which will give UK citizens added protection from identity theft and fraud and ensure speedier travel across borders – that explains why the paper looks so messed up when you see odd stray fibres.
Moving onto the “security” features:
- moving the chip which stores the holder’s details to the inside of the passport cover where it will no longer be visible. This gives additional physical protection as well as making it much harder to replace the chip without damage to the passport cover being spotted – We’ll see as they say – considering the chip only has a 2 year warranty (and a passport is issued for 10 years – I have issues with this)
- Secondary image of the holder printed onto the observations page – so people can see you mug twice now! How lovely!
- New designs now stretching across two pages – which is madder than the current design but at least the birds have gone (and the bird is NOT the word in this case)
- a new transparent covering which includes several holograms to protect the holder’s personal details – more security again
The fact that you should really consider an RFID Passport holder so it isn’t scanned isn’t mentioned for some bizare reason by IPS – as has been proved it is possible to scan passports from a short distance and extract the content in them – and theorecticly clone them.
There is some spin about lower costs, but this is IPS – the one branch of the goverment when emptying your wallet and them not happy is common.
Or to put it graphicly – here is the cost of passport prices in the past 20 years.
Data: Wikipedia.
The BBC has an excellent history of passport images – personally I still remember the old blue passports. Now that does date me 😉
