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Australia is looking at trialling passport-less travel in a move Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop predicts will go global. The idea of cloud passports is the result of a hipster-style-hackathon held at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which culminated in an X-Factor style audition before the secretary Peter Varghese, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, Assistant Minister Steve Ciobo and Chris Vein from the World Bank.
Under a cloud passport, a traveller's identity and biometrics data would be stored in a cloud, so passengers would no longer need to carry their passports and risk having them lost or stolen. DFAT says 38,718 passports were registered as lost or stolen in 2014-15, consistent with the 38,689 reported missing the previous year.
Australia and New Zealand are now in discussions about trialling cloud passports. Ms Bishop acknowledged there were security requirements that would have to be met in order to store biometrics in the cloud, but told Fairfax Media: "We think it will go global."
[Also Covered By]: Australia Is Testing Virtual Passports
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:35AM
Not every place in the world has has a cloud. Some small countries, even some off the coast of Australia, are lucky enough to have electricity, let alone a reliable internet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:37AM
It's called New Zealand you insensitive clod
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:45AM
I was thinking more North than East.
The Kiwis pretty much got their shit together.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:56AM
North Korea doesn't need electricity, you decadent barbarian.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:00AM
The Kiwis pretty much got their shit together.
If only that were true; we still have so much "not together"; but maybe we are better then the AUstrailians for now, they seem a bit lost at the moment.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:18PM
Use velcro--can join any number of sheep.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:39PM
Polygamy is still illegal here
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Dunbal on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:02AM
So, instead of carrying your passport with you, you will have to carry some other form of photo id so that authorities can confirm who you are and retrieve your passport data.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:48PM
Exactly. Sounds to me like we just scrapped passports. Just use your driver ID... o_O
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 04 2015, @04:32PM
Technically you only need use "someone's" drivers license or ID card, not necessarily yours. This could get really weird WRT immigration. Policy is to issue IDs pretty much for the asking and punish violations after they are detected, if they punish at all. (Your state may vary).
"So Mr. VLM your passport record indicates you entered the USA 50 times and never left ... explain yourself Mr VLM..." If we're going to gut the passport control system almost completely, at least admit it officially, as opposed to some stealth implementation under some BS technology project.
Another oddity is you can generally use your passport as your photo ID. At least around here for certain purposes. So using a photo ID to get access to your passport to use it as a photo ID to ... this gets circular.
Finally I've never seen a good explanation of why voter ID cards are free, drivers licenses which are physically identical other than the writing on them are $40, and passport renewal is $110. If everything is all cloudy and information shared and paperless office, they should all be free, right? For $110 I'd like a paper trinket, why not?
I'm also a little confused about the passport card system, seeing as they're approximately useless for international travel, last time I checked. Maybe they've stopped offering them. They were issued by the passport people but were not "real" legal passports. Kinda weird, like the feds playing "just pretend".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @12:24AM
(Assuming we're talking about the US ones...) They're useful to go to low risk areas. I think it's like Canada, maybe Mexico and Caribbean islands a cruise ship takes you to.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:25PM
I think the idea with those was just to blur the borders a bit. So if you live in Buffalo, NY and you need to drive the two hours to Toronto every weekend for business or to see your family or whatever you don't have to carry the passport book around with you all the time. You can just stick the card in your wallet with your license and you'll always have it. But since they're also easier to lose and probably easier to counterfeit they won't get you much further than that.
Some people need a passport just to drive to the other end of their street. Hell, there have been cases where people needed a passport to back out of their driveway! That's the kind of idiocy passport cards are probably designed for.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:12AM
With various Governments' current record of security, I'm not sure that putting every passport holder's details into the 'cloud' is such a good idea. Maybe a few 10's of thousands of passports are reported missing each year, but that is significantly better than every passport being compromised, even those belonging to people who do not travel!
Of course, the same Governments will promise security and ease of use, but they haven't managed to achieve it so far. If it is secure then it will not be easy to use, so they will compromise on security to ensure that the system 'works' as they imagine it should, rather than being the secure system it is designed to be in the first instance.
This is the type of target that hackers/crackers dream about, and if/when they are successful at getting inside it, they will be able to steal the identities of a huge proportion of the nation in one attack. It is simply too big a prize not to try. But perhaps I am becoming a little more cynical in my old age ....
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:50PM
"We think it will go global."
Australia is being used as a testing ground for one-world government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:31PM
AFAIK, most countries have their passport databases with some sort of online access even today. Whether they've been broken into, we'll not really find out until somebody comes out (with this info)
(Score: 1) by Mike on Thursday November 05 2015, @04:05PM
Under a cloud passport, a traveller's identity and biometrics data would be stored in a cloud, so passengers would no longer need to carry their passports and risk having them lost or stolen. DFAT says 38,718 passports were registered as lost or stolen in 2014-15, consistent with the 38,689 reported missing the previous year.
They think putting them in the "cloud" will protect them from being stolen? really? If they think that ~39K stolen passports a year is bad, just wait until they have them stored in the "cloud". Talk about a problem looking for a creation.