(Trinidad Express) Upgrades to the immigration system to assist with the detection of fraudulent passports and other travel documents is set to begin by January next year.
The technological improvements, which were approved by Cabinet in October include linking of the local Integrated Border Management System (IBMS) to the international Electronic Documentation Information System of Network (EDISON), which contains images of over 3,000 genuine and fake travel document samples from over 200 countries.
The database is expected to be used for verifying the security features of fraudulent passports.
In a release from the Ministry of National Security yesterday, Minister Jack Warner said to date “there have been no detected cases of counterfeiting or tampering with Trinidad and Tobago machine-readable passports, there have been attacks on the systems in other countries. Identity theft and the use of fraudulent documents are major components of the transnational crime problem. Therefore the upgrade of our technology will keep us ahead of the fraudsters where the T&T passports are concerned and will also assist in protecting against crimes involving the use of passports and travel documents from other countries.”
“The Immigration Division is already able to trace lost and stolen passports through a linkage with the Interpol Lost and Stolen Travel Documents Database. By linking to the EDISON system we will be able to better detect persons attempting to use fraudulent or counterfeit documents to enter Trinidad and Tobago or any of the other 200 countries that are in the EDISON network”.
The upgrade is scheduled to start in January 2013 and will also include the training and certification of Immigration Officers in Forensic Counterfeit Examination, and will be done through the IOM and the University of the West Indies.
The Edison system will complement the proposed E-Passport or digital passport which Warner said he hoped to have onstream by 2017.