Electronics Weekly
NewP@ss is e-passport technology
Called “NewP@ss”, the research project cost €30m, half of which was covered by business and industry partners and the other half by the governments of five member states of the European Union. The German share was about €8.7m.
NewP@ss makes it possible to update ePassports and similar documents during their period of validity rather than replacing them, for example if a name is changed due to marriage or an address changed.
The secure use of digital identity documents for smartphones and tablets was also researched during the development of the chip.
The experts considered open architectures and tested new security mechanisms at both software and hardware levels. The primary focus was placed on contactless communication with an eID Card, secure mobile user authentication and confidential data input and output within a protected computing environment.
Biometric travel documents are currently issued in all 28 EU states with its approximately 500 million residents. Electronic identity cards are used in 23 European countries.
Other European states have already announced that they will introduce electronic identity cards in the next few years or begin issuing the next generation, which this research project helped to develop.
A total of 120 states have distributed around 500 million electronic travel documents since 2006.
