A group of leading organizations from air transport have teamed with smart card and biometric integration companies to develop and trial an s-Travel (secure-travel) initiative that will incorporate digital certificates.
The project aims to achieve the highest level of identity verification for frequent travelers and contribute towards improving the security of the global air transport system. Later this year, the European Commission (EC) and Swiss Office for Education and Science funded consortium will undertake trials in Europe, with the intention of the service being expanded globally.

The s-Travel project will include digital authentication of people to enable secure physical and electronic airline and airport processing for frequent air travelers, and in the future may expand to enable staff access to airline and airport facilities. The project will develop and implement systems to authenticate passengers at both check-in and boarding stages, based on modification to the airlines` Departure Control Systems (DCS).

To ensure the provision of an interoperable global solution, SITA
will assist IATA with the development of industry standards. IATA
will define the enrollment processes and procedures to be followed for airlines to authenticate frequent travelers or their own personnel, prior to them issuing a smart-card containing biometrics and digital certificates. SITA will ensure that the various competitive biometric technologies available will be able to interface to, and are interoperable with, current and future airport infrastructures.

The s-Travel initiative will combine digital certificates (provided jointly by SITA and IATA), smart-cards (GEMPLUS) and biometric technology integration (KEYWARE). To ensure that the s-Travel system does not infringe upon the privacy of frequent travelers the consortium will work closely with the EC and relevant data commissioners to resolve confidentiality issues.

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(03/05/2002) IATA Launches Digital ID security initiative

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