Passport Specialty Ink – What’s Hidden Between the Lines?

Anyone who owns a passport knows that it contains flimsy pages with various patriotic designs hidden inside. Just to look at a passport speciality ink, you would think it’s nothing more than a small booklet that’s about the same size as a greeting card. However, it’s an amazing, powerful, high-tech tool that allows movement across borders and serves as highly reliable proof of your origins and identity.

Over half of Americans don’t have a passport, but outside the US, several citizens of other nations do. Some feel desperate to get away and others are simply explorers who want to see the world. The regulations for obtaining a passport can be stringent in some places like Europe and the United States. The laws and regulations relate to how the passport is designed and stamped to thwart efforts of people who make fake passports.

Passports Past & Present

During the early 1700s, passports were nothing more than 12 x 18-inch sheet of paper. Today, passports are equipped with all sorts of security and technology that makes them virtually impossible to recreate by the average person. Optically variable inks (specialty industrial inks) are used alongside holograms to create pages that can’t be reproduced by other means. They also have embedded microchips for facial recognition, making them not just a way to cross borders, but a high-tech device.

To the naked eye, the pages of the passport are just that. There is nothing to see on the pages until a special light is applied to the pages for officials to approve or disapprove entry into a country.

Worldwide, passports all have some security measures and designs standards that are provided by ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization). The ICAO is a U.N. agency of 191 members who work to ensure aviation regulations and policies are consistent across the globe.

Fundamental Security & Safety

A fundamental standard for all passports is that they must include minimum uses of various features that apply to three levels of security issues. There are other mandates to ensure passport booklets are machine readable, which is something that was implemented in 2015 in an effort to eliminate all handwritten documents. Even though it’s not mandatory, about 135 countries have chosen to use embedded chips that include vital statistics and data about the passport holder.

The common goal is to create interoperable passports that can help travelers move across borders securely, safely, efficiently, and effectively. That’s why security regulations and voluntary features (like the chip) are so crucial to all countries regarding passports. Authorities need to feel assured that the person in possession of the passport is the person crossing the border and is a person who isn’t a threat to their country. Naturally, there are exceptions and exclusions to that rule, but it’s as good a system as we have worldwide for the technology we have today.

Holograms aren’t just for looks. They are measures taken to prevent counterfeiting. Watermarks, invisible ink, special kinds of paper, and little threads are used within the pages of passports to make them as anti-counterfeit as possible. Each country has its own ways of accomplishing this.

Passports are designed to be tamper-free, counterfeit-free, and secure documents to confirm the identity of the carrier. While no technology in this venue is perfect, industrial inks like specialty invisible inks and stamps play a large role in protecting the citizens of various countries.

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