Where, how, why and for how much to get a new passport for citizens of Ukraine.
Photo 1 of 4:© wikipedia.org
As we all know, in order for the EU to open a visa-free regime for Ukraine, a number of requirements must be met on our part. One of them is to replace existing passports with biometric ones. But not everyone still really understands what it is and how they will act. Let's figure it out together.
What's happened biometric passport?
- This is a document that gives the right to leave the country and enter foreign countries. A biometric passport differs from the usual one in that it has a special microprocessor chip embedded in it, which contains information about its owner: a two-dimensional photograph of its owner, as well as his data: last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth, passport number, date of issue and expiration actions.
© wikipedia.orgBesides, new passport differs from the old one also with new watermarks and special paper.
According to the specialists of the plant, which produced the first copies of biometric passports, historical themes are used in the issuance of a passport. The pages of the document reflect all stages of the life of Ukraine, starting with the Trypillia culture. According to experts, the security of the biometric passport is made at the highest level, this issue was approached carefully, starting with the choice of paper - it will be with yellow-blue fibers with a fixed multi-tone watermark.
According to the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of November 26, 2014 No. 669, a clear procedure for obtaining, extracting and destroying digitized fingerprints of a person is defined. After scanning the fingers, the digitized data is entered into the Unified State Demographic Register and transmitted via secure communication channels to the Main computer center Register. After that, a note is made in the Unified Demographic State Register that the fingerprints are entered in a contactless electronic medium, and a corresponding mark is made upon the fact of issuing the document.
How to get a biometric passport?
To obtain a passport, you must bring the following documents: internal passport, an identification code, as well as a certificate from the military registration and enlistment office or a military ID for young people under 25 years old. Already on the spot, everyone who wants to get a biometric passport writes an application, takes a picture and puts his fingers to the scanner.
Where to apply for a biometric passport?
Since the beginning of this year new passport can be issued at any branch of the State migration service(GMS), that is, in the OVIRs at the place of registration or in a special department in Kyiv. They promise that soon it will be possible to issue a passport at any OVIR, regardless of the place of registration of a citizen.
What information is included in a biometric passport?
Fingerprints and other digitized data are entered on the chip - a photo and a signature indicated on the first inner page of the passport. Also on the first page will be indicated:
the name of the state;
surname and name of the owner, his gender, citizenship, date and place of birth;
serial number of the passport;
date of issue and expiration (10 years);
identification code of the passport holder;
photo and signature.
Optionally, additional data can be added to the chip, for example, blood type. But data on the owner's children cannot be entered into the new passports - a separate biometric passport must be issued for the child.
Is it necessary to obtain a biometric passport?
Getting a new biometric passport is not mandatory. If you do not want to receive it, you can use the old-style passport until its expiration date. But then you will not be able to count on visa-free travel to countries European Union even after the introduction of a visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU.
How much will a biometric passport cost?
The head of the State Migration Service, Sergei Radutny, says that a new biometric passport will cost Ukrainians 518 hryvnias. From January, only 30 registration points will work, but in a month they promise to launch them in all branches of the service in Ukraine.
All foreign passports, issued before 2015, will remain in force, and it is not necessary to change them to biometric ones. In addition, it will be possible to refuse to enter fingerprints and an electronic chip and issue a regular passport. It will cost less - 461 hryvnia.
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Very soon, the Urals will begin to receive new, biometric passports. At the same time, no one cancels the “old” ones, and officials do not tire of emphasizing that their mass replacement is not expected. Not only that: applications for old-style documents also continue to be accepted. If you want a “new” passport, order it, if you want an “old” one ... What is biometric passport how to arrange it and why is it needed at all? Ural TourServer found out almost everything about the new documents.
Biometrics has its pros and cons. One way or another, the rules of personal identification are changing in the world. The European Union and the United States insist: the world should gradually switch to biometric passports. In Russia, this process has begun, slowly but surely. Since January 2006, as an experiment, new generation passports have been issued in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. The experiment passed, albeit with varying success, and now new format introduced throughout Russia. In Yekaterinburg, the first point will open any day.
What is the difference between a new passport and a regular one?
There are few external differences. Unless the page with the owner's photo is placed at the beginning, and not at the end. But the “stuffing” of this page is very different: a microchip is sewn inside, which stores personal information and a color photograph of the owner. The photo is not simple, it is she who is the carrier of the biometric parameter (more on this below). The size of the state duty differs: a new one costs 1,000 rubles for an adult and 500 rubles for a child (the old one costs 400 and 200 rubles, respectively). The degree of protection differs: a new passport is more difficult to forge. Firstly, they are printed only in one printing house, at Goznak, since only there is the possibility of printing by laser engraving. Secondly, the microchip is very difficult to hack, as it uses a good electronic signature algorithm. There are no more differences.
What is a microchip?
Based on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Chip) technology. Information from it is read contactlessly, the principle of operation is reminiscent of scanning a barcode from products in a supermarket. According to the governments of European countries and the United States, the new technology not only simplifies the procedure for crossing borders, but also provides additional protection against international terrorism. However, not everyone considers these chips reliable: a year ago, BBC journalists conducted an experiment and, using a reader costing about $400, they were able to easily copy all the information about the passport holder into a computer.
What exactly is "biometric" in the new passport?
Now in the new generation of international passports, only one biometric parameter is indicated: the distance between the pupils of the eyes. This parameter is “hardwired” into digital photography (which is why photography is not simple). No fingerprints and retinas, despite the hasty reports of some media, will not yet be in the new passports. “If the G8 countries set such a task, we are ready to introduce other bioparameters, including in ready-made passports,” Tatiana Lepeshonok, a leading specialist of the Federal Migration Service of Russia in the Sverdlovsk region, assured the Ural TourServer correspondent. “But now no one sets such a task.”
Where to apply for a biometric passport?
At the time of this writing, March 5, 2008, there are no such places in the Sverdlovsk region. The only point of acceptance of applications, on the street. Krylova, 2, is still being prepared. The system was going to be launched at the end of February, but they did not have time. When exactly this will happen, no one knows. Promise that from day to day.
As Tatyana Lepeshonok, press secretary of the Federal Migration Service for the Sverdlovsk Region, told Ural TourServer, the procedure for “technical testing of communication channel equipment” is now underway: “Today we sent two test questionnaires to Moscow, now we are waiting for them to receive finished documents. After that, it remains for us to check the readers: whether everything is functioning as it should. Then we will send another 14 “probes” to Moscow and check again. As soon as positive results are received, we will start accepting questionnaires. It's not as long as it seems."
Until the end of 2008, points will be opened in 15 more subdivisions of the Federal Migration Service of Russia in the Sverdlovsk Region. In the meantime, there will be only one application acceptance point for the entire Sverdlovsk region. Today, there are 4 photo booths and 15 workplaces. It is not surprising that officials are afraid of the hype surrounding new passports.
Already, those wishing to obtain a biometric passport are contacting Krylova 2. But so far applications are not being accepted.
What documents will be needed?
For admission to a new generation passport, you must provide the following documents:
- application form (2 copies),
- passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation,
- National tax 1000 rubles (payment is made at the branches of Sberbank of Russia),
- a previously obtained passport,
- persons of military age (18-27 years old) provide a certificate from the military registration and enlistment office of the established form.
The application must be certified at the place of the last place of work, since it contains the column “ Labor activity”, just like in an application for a regular passport.
Children under 14 years of age for admission to a new generation of international passport must provide the following documents:
- application form for children (2 copies),
- birth certificate with a mark of belonging to the citizenship of the Russian Federation (with a photocopy),
- state duty 500 rubles (payment is made at the branches of the Savings Bank of Russia),
- previously received passport (if any).
Photographing is carried out only when receiving questionnaires at the Federal Migration Service.
Children cannot be entered in the biometric passport. To travel abroad with a child of any age, you will have to issue a personal passport for him.
Do production times differ?
By law, no. The term for issuing a new generation passport cannot exceed one month from the date of filing an application for its issuance. Exactly the same period is provided by law for ordinary passports. In fact, since new passports are printed exclusively at the Goznak factory, the issuance process can be a little longer. In addition, the employees of the Federal Migration Service themselves admit that at first, failures are possible. Judging by media reports, there were many such failures in Moscow: delays were up to six months.
Will you have to queue?
In Moscow, Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg in January, huge queues lined up for new passports. Worked journalistic "duck" that the validity of old-style passports will end in 2009. Of course, a whole army of "entrepreneurs" immediately appeared, offering to resolve the issue out of turn for an additional fee. Officials had to spend a lot of effort to convince people that the excitement was created artificially, and that no one is going to cancel old passports. It is possible that a similar excitement will arise in our country.
Can an intermediary be entrusted with issuing a biometric passport?
Firms have already appeared offering to resolve the issue with a new passport faster and easier. However, the simplification mechanism is not entirely clear, because in any case you will have to come to the FMS in person to take a picture. No intermediary has special equipment for this.
When will old passports be cancelled?
Nobody knows. But in the next 5 years this will not happen for sure. The “old” foreign passport familiar to us has not lost its rights at all with the introduction of the new one, so it is still issued, and still for a period of 5 years.
Is it true that since 2009 many countries will not be allowed to enter with an old passport?
Indeed, the press has repeatedly broadcast the fear that the countries of Europe and the United States will refuse to let guests in with ordinary, non-biometric passports. The fact is that in 2002, 118 countries of the world signed the New Orleans Agreement, which recognized facial biometrics as the main identification technology for international passports and entry visas of the next generation, and decided from August 2006 to completely switch to such passports. However, most of the EU countries missed the deadline: only seven states announced their readiness. The deadline was then pushed back to 2009. Rumors immediately spread that from January 1, 2009, the United States and European countries would close their borders to all holders of old-generation passports.
However, despite the hype in the media, so far, nowhere in the world, not a single official source has openly stated this. The term “since 2009” is not specified in any interstate agreement. It is possible that since 2009 the rules for crossing borders will change, and when entering the Schengen zone, you really will have to take fingerprints and scan the retina. But in any case, passports have absolutely nothing to do with it. Security measures at the entrance to the European Union are still in the nature of intention. The dates for the entry into force of the document were not agreed upon even within the EU.
Why is it needed at all?
So far Ural TourServer has found only one real advantage. Self-registration kiosks are now being installed at some Moscow airports, which can read information from new generation passports. In these kiosks, an air passenger can check in on his own, and he does not have to stand in queues for check-in. But this is not yet everywhere, and it only applies to passengers without luggage. Not all holders of new generation passports are generally aware that they have such an advantage. One way or another, when passing through border control, people with new passports do not have any advantages.
The introduction of biometric passports in Ukraine is imposed by the European Union. This is one of the clauses of the agreement visa-free regime. For example, to enter Europe you need a biometric passport, but why introduce a general biometric passport in Ukraine? Why comply with the recommendations of the EU, which has not yet issued basic passports to millions of nomadic gypsies? Why Europe diligently disseminates its "positive" experience?
Let's look at this question from the point of view of Orthodoxy. We have not yet forgotten that Ukraine is a Christian, Orthodox country. Europe calls us orthodox Christians.
(In religion, orthodoxy presupposes unswerving adherence to the tenets of faith, the foundations of faith, and the main traditions.) This means that in building a state, we must be guided by the Holy Scriptures and the experience set forth in it. But, as we can see, our Bible politicians prefer European frameworks and rules (…)
A biometric passport is the penultimate step before the "altar" of the devil. All who take such a passport will betray Christ, like Judas, and in the choice of the “Cross and Bread” they will take bread, for which then “they will forever suffer in fiery hell, where gnashing of teeth and darkness ...” . People, unfortunately, are careless, used to wearing rose-colored glasses, do not want to see and hear the truth, they want to hear only good and crafty flattery. They do not pay attention to the warnings of the Holy Scriptures and to those prophecies that for the most part have already come true. Including about the coming apocalypse, which will begin with the application of the number of the beast to each person.
Deputies loudly declare the voluntary receipt of a biometric passport, while the bill does not provide for the rejection of electronic passports. Anyone who does not agree to accept a new passport, upon expiration of the current passport, is automatically deprived of all their civil, political, economic, social, labor and cultural rights.
That is, by refusing a social card and an electronic passport, due to their religious beliefs, a person will be practically deprived of the opportunity to receive social, medical assistance and even buy food. This is truly democracy and freedom of choice in a European way (fragment of an article by A. Berezovskaya, Obozrevatel).
Biometric technologies are taking over the world
Germany and the US have agreed to use biometric technology in border control. Citizens of the two countries who have biometric passports can take advantage of the fast-track border control programs.
Wisconsin doctors and nurses are biometrically identified when accessing electronic medical records.
A clinic in the South Bronx identifies patients by their irises.
English schoolchildren will begin to master biometric technologies. A cashless payment system, in which students will be identified by fingerprint, is being rolled out at four schools in Greater Manchester.
Mexican President F. Calderon issued a decree according to which all citizens of this Latin American country under the age of 17 will be issued biometric identification cards. The ID-card chip will include information about the prints of all ten fingers and the iris of the eyes of young Mexicans, as well as their digital photographs. Upon completion of the issuance of ID-cards to young citizens, the second stage of the biometric project will begin, within the framework of which these cards will be received by representatives of older generations.
In July 2011, the 10 millionth biometric passport was issued in Russia. In memory of this event, the citizen was awarded a diploma and memorable gifts with the symbols of the FMS of Russia.
The British government launched a campaign among young Londoners, urging them to receive biometric identification cards on a voluntary basis. This campaign is aimed at young people aged 16 to 24. Young people are being encouraged to apply for biometric ID-cards, which will be able to verify their identity both in Britain itself and in other EU countries.
The argument in favor of obtaining biometric ID-cards is the fact that with their help young people will be able to verify their age when buying alcoholic beverages, etc. goods the sale of which to minors is prohibited.
Wikipedia (Internet encyclopedia): A biometric passport is a document that differs from the usual one in that a special chip is embedded in it, which contains a two-dimensional photograph of its owner, as well as his data: last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth, passport number, date of issue and expiration .
The New Orleans Accord, which recognized facial biometrics as the primary identification technology for next-generation passports and entry visas, was signed by 188 countries around the world after the events of September 11, 2001. After which the US government stated that the documents received after 2006 and used for visa-free entry to the country of citizens of countries participating in the Visa Waiver program must be biometric.
In Poland, only the photo of the citizen is encoded in the microchip of the passport. Information about the fingerprints and iris of the passport holder's eye is coming soon. On this moment in Poland, about 110 points of issuing new passports with a special microprocessor have been opened. A biometric passport costs about 140 PLN.
In Russia, since 2009, points for issuing biometric passports have been operating in all subjects of the Russian Federation. Data from these points is sent to a single data personalization center. From March 1, 2010, biometric passports in Russia are issued for a period of 10 years, the cost of obtaining a passport for an adult is 2,500 rubles.
In Moldova, biometric passports have been issued since 2009 along with non-biometric ones. Since January 1, 2011, only biometric passports have been issued to citizens - with information about fingerprints, a digital photograph and a digital signature of the owner.
In the United States, the consular section of the State Department handles the processing of passports for American citizens. Since December 2005, such documents - with a black cover - began to be issued to American diplomats. Since April 2006 - with red - to federal government officials. For ordinary citizens, the "electronic passport" has a blue cover.
Biometrics - "global information drain"
- Recently, the authorities of the Middle East state announced the arrest of a suspect in massive data theft. It turned out to be a white-collar worker who worked for the Israeli Ministry of Social Security. In 2006, while in the office after hours, he accessed a biometric database containing the names, dates of birth, national identification numbers, and family members of 9 million Israelis. The stolen database also contained information about the health status of individual citizens.
Shortly after being fired from his job for unrelated crimes, the unnamed suspect began offering stolen information to members of the Jewish criminal community.
According to Yeshiva World News, at least 6 people bought a copy of this information. One of the buyers posted the information on the Web under the name "Argon 2006", and it instantly spread in torrent networks ("site").
International associations have argued that a biometric passport cannot be faked, but Dutch scientist Jeroen van Beek of the University of Amsterdam managed to forge a biometric passport. During the experiment, the Dutchman took two chips of real-life British passports and created exact copies of them. After that, he changed the data on the copies of the chips, inserting photographs of Osama bin Laden and the Palestinian suicide bomber H. Daragme into the passports. The program recommended for checking passports in international airports recognized the forged passports as real.
Commissioned by the British newspaper The Times, van Beek developed a method for reading and copying microchips, as well as changing the data contained on them. Moreover, the received chips are recognized as real by the Golden Reader program used by the International Civil Aviation Organization to check passports at airports. After developing the method, it took the Dutchman less than an hour to make two fake microchips, ready to be implanted in the paper part of the passport. According to The Times, the identities of Osama bin Laden and Heba Daragme were chosen on purpose so that no one would doubt that the received microchips were fake.
Of particular interest is that in currently In Britain, 3,000 passports were stolen, ready to be chipped. Then the UK Home Office said that it would not be possible to use the stolen passports, since it was virtually impossible to fake a microchip. However, van Beek's research shows that this will not cause much difficulty.
The vulnerability of the system lies in the absence of a single directory of public keys of countries issuing biometric passports. In the absence of a reliable source of public keys, biopassport programs verify the validity of the electronic signature of the data stored on the chip using the public key also stored on the passport chip.
It is clear that an attacker, after modifying the data in the chip, can re-sign them using his own private key and write his own public key to the chip. The program has no way to convict him - the signature is correct, and the fact of using a substitute public key remains undetected due to the lack of a standard ("Wikipedia").
The problem is rooted in the fact that any biometric system compares not objects of the real world, but measurement results. Hence a number of excellent opportunities for misleading her. For example, having obtained other people's measurement results, you can save them in advance in a form that is already ready for processing and, having gained access to the equipment, enter it into the system bypassing biometric sensors.
Access to the software will allow you to replace the data of another user stored in the system with your own. But even without any access, you can easily deceive the biometric check by presenting the sensors with a dummy, for example, of someone else's finger. Fundamental difference a copied fingerprint from a stolen smart card or a spy password is that the latter are easy to replace, and a person has only ten fingers. And since people don't often work with gloves on, getting someone's fingerprint without their knowledge is a simple matter.
This was demonstrated quite convincingly by the well-known German hacker group CCC, "stealing" the fingerprint of the Minister of the Interior of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, who actively advocated the inclusion of fingerprints in e-passports. During public speaking at university, he had the imprudence to touch a glass of water, and now the drawing of his own finger has become public domain and widely disseminated on the Internet.
It is not difficult to get a drawing of the iris - a simple photograph of the eye in good quality. And people simply leave samples of their DNA everywhere - to get them, an unwashed coffee cup or a fallen hair is enough (Era of Biometrics, or Twilight of Freedom, Vokrug Sveta magazine).
Scientists from the University "Radboud de Nijmegen" (Netherlands) came to a sensational conclusion: biometric passports widely used in the West are dangerous. From the microchips used in passports, terrorists can create a passport-bomb. A bomb, which, for example, will work when passing passport control. As it turned out, documents with a high degree of protection can be hacked, and the information on them can be copied, blocked or forged.
The corresponding device was demonstrated at a press conference in Los Angeles. It can intercept radio signals from chips, which, according to the developers of biometric passports, cannot be caught. Having presented the principle of its operation to journalists, the hackers promised that they would finalize a portable device for intercepting the radio signals of biometric passports, but they would not launch them into mass production (“http://www.alltravels.com.ua”).
newspaper "Mir" №44 2011