Security Features
The latest Irish passports have security features designed to make them difficult to forge or be mistaken as forgeries. They have also been optimised for machine reading.
The identity page of the passport has been moved to the front of the passport, and is now printed on a plastic card. This allows easier machine reading of the passport, as the official has to spend less time finding the identity page in the passport. The top-right corner of the passport contains the biometric chip, which contains a copy of the information contained on the identity page, and a facial scan of the holder. To prevent unauthorised parties remotely accessing the information stored in the RFID biometric chip, the machine readable zone of the identity page must be scanned to unlock it. This safeguard is known as Basic Access Control.
The title of the identity page "Éire/Ireland/Irlande" "Pas/Passport/Passeport" is printed in colour-changing ink, which varies from light green to gold-red, depending on the angle of the light shining on it. The background of the identity page is a complex celtic design, with the words "Éire Ireland" occasionally woven into the design.
The identity picture is now greyscale, and is digitally printed onto the surface of the page, rather than the actual photos sent by the applicant being pasted onto the page. The Irish harp is superimposed as a hologram onto the bottom right corner of the photograph. The words "Éire Ireland" are embossed several times into either side of the identity page. This embossing partially covers the photograph as an added security measure. A likeness of the photograph of the applicant is pin-punched into the surface of the identity page, and can be viewed when the identity page is held to light.
Under UV light fluorescing fibres are visible on every page except the data page. Careful examination yields page numbers on the left hand side of the left page, and vice versa for the right hand page. As you progress through the pages the numbers shift downward until on the last page they are near the bottom.
Read more about this topic: Irish Passport
Famous quotes containing the words security and/or features:
“In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.”
—J. William Fulbright (b. 1905)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)