BORDER MANAGEMENT & E-PASSPORT ISSUANCE

To date, a majority of border and customs inspectors use manual forensic techniques to detect forged identity documents. These forensic tests allow checking of security features that are incorporated in the document. They typically involve examination, using specialty optical equipment, of the expected ultraviolet (UV) and near-infrared (NIR) properties, guilloche, optically variable device (OVD) presence, embossing, perforation, retroreflective laminate (3M Confirm) background patterns and overlay patterns (visible, UV, NIR).

A key problem inspectors have is that they simply do not have enough time to perform those checks thoroughly for the thousands of people they deal with daily. Unfortunately, the introduction of computers in inspection stations in most cases merely replicated what the specialty optical equipment does. So, for example, most of the so-called “full page document readers” used at inspection stations merely pull up photographs of an inserted document under various lighting conditions. Some productivity gain is achieved with optical character recognition (OCR) techniques used to read the information from the document, but the forensic checking is left to the inspector.

AssureTec has encoded many of these forensic-quality checks specific to the thousands of known identity document types into a proprietary Document Authentication Library. When an identity document is inserted into the AssureTec system, it automatically identifies the document type and, within a few seconds, runs the forensic-quality checks specific to that document type. In almost the same amount of time that it takes to pull up images using a standard document reader, AssureTec’s system can authenticate the document as well. Discrepancies in the expected response to the examination are reported to the inspector as a comprehensive risk profile.

Using the patented AssureTec system, document inspectors can be more productive. The AssureTec system makes the document inspection process so easy and automatic, it can be used to advantage even for applications such as age checking at liquor stores and alcohol-serving establishments such as bars and restaurants, where the operator has little to no document inspection training. Trained document inspectors can reserve their best efforts for the few documents that are flagged by the software as risky instead of being on high alert for every document passing through.

In a 2006 U.S. senate hearing convened by Senator Grassley, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official remarked that their auditors were able to pass through border control inspection points in 18 out of 18 attempts with the same fake IDs. Within a few seconds of the same fake IDs being inserted into the AssureTec system, they were flagged as high risk documents.

AssureTec’s first major implementation was the Chilean Border Control Project for Policia de Investigaciones de Chile in early 2004, implemented in collaboration with Unisys. Since then, AssureTec has secured many international customers in Border Management at Papua New Guinea and Macau, among other countries.

AssureTec’s systems are also used for breeder document authentication during e-Passport Issuance at Singapore, Thailand, and Qatar, among other countries.