At an age where traveling is inevitable for almost everyone, passports are an essential item a traveler possesses, while traveling internationally. It is the second most important piece of proof of your existence in a country. The first is your physical presence of course.
But as you know, holding a physical copy of a passport comes with risks. Especially if you’re a frequent traveler, and are prone to the risk of theft, losing, or misplacing your goodies. Most of the ones that get lost, get thrown away, but a small proportion that ends up in the wrong hands will pose a serious problem for the owner. Between the years 2008 and 2013, in the UK alone, over 160,000 passports were reported stolen or lost, according to BBC. Not to mention, the data stored (in relation to passports) are stored on a centralized platform, increasing the risk of data breaches.
But, with emerging technologies, a problem like this can be tackled. Utilizing the robust nature of blockchain technology, passports can be stored on a decentralized platform that is incapable of being tampered with. The only catch will be that the government of the country will be in authority of the system, ensuring that no third party has access to the network other than the government.
In India, it was announced that the Apex bank (Reserve Bank of India) will be launching its very own digital currency, as the risk of other cryptos such as Bitcoin and Ethereum (which a lot of Indians have put their money on) is quite high given its ambiguity. In the same way, the risks associated with a passport can be mitigated by using a decentralized platform that the government can hold authority over.
This can also be used to deal with issues related to immigration and processes related to validation and verification, which currently is a cumbersome process. It can also be fed in details about one’s vaccination status, which is now an important factor to determine if that person is eligible to travel.
In a day and age where even the refrigerators in our house are digitized, it's high time we work on digitizing an important factor of our lives, such as passports. Given the multi-faceted uses of blockchain, this can also be extended to other factors like birth certificates, and national identity, and even in medical spaces to store a patient’s medical history (data that cannot be sold).
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