TNAG-1405-FCO40-1880-Future-of-Hong-Kong-passports-and-visas-1985 — Page 209

Second line

2 -

the passport number;

an internationally agreed code for the

nationality of the holder;

the holder's date of birth and sex;

the date of expiry of the document;

the holder's personal number for those

countries which use identity cards;

a check-digit for added security.

3.

The rest of the data page contains the

photograph of the holder and personal particulars for

visual inspection.

4.

The machine reading technique used is

Optical Character Recognition (OCR). An important

advantage is that all data that can be read by the

machine can also be read by the holder.

5.

The format of the machine readable passport

has the advantage of having all the personal

particulars about the holder on one page instead of

several pages as is the case at present. This will

reduce considerably the time taken for visual

inspection.

There will be no means of adding data to

the passport after issue. As a result of the

technical changes required by machine readability,

forgery will be more difficult to carry out and

easier to detect than is the case with conventional

passports.