News: Why "Dubai incident" is a threat for "security"!

In the last ten days we have learnt that “persons unknown” stole the identity of British citizens and cloned modern UK passports to enter Dubai to perform an assassination.

Last week, the Foreign Secretary got up in the House of Commons to say that his legal action before the Court of Appeal was to protect intelligence vital to national security given to the UK by the USA’s national security agencies.

There are obvious data protection consequences that flow from these events that are not being picked up by journalists as part of the current public discourse.

In relation to biometric passports, the official Government information states that all passports now issued contain ‘biometric’ details "which are unique to you – like your fingerprint, the iris of your eye, and your facial features”. In addition, “the chip inside the passport contains information about the holder’s face – such as the distances between eyes, nose, mouth and ears” which “can then be used to identify the passport-holder”.

Also the chip is protected in four ways:

* A ‘digital signature’, which shows that the data is genuine and which country has issued the passport

* Basic Access Control, a ‘chip protocol’ that prevents the data being read without the passport holder’s knowledge

* Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a digital technique that confirms the data on the chip was written by IPS and has not been changed

* The chips can only be read at a few centimetres’ distance from a chip reader – so they cannot be accidentally read

So, by implication, either “persons unknown” using the UK Passports in Dubai managed to evade some of the above security checks (including any biometric security) or airport security arrangements at a major international airport has suffered a complete failure. Which one is most culpable? It is a very important question.

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(img: darkgovernment.com)