A New Identification System Is Installed at the Border

International Organization for Migration (IOM) has installed a new identification system at Georgian border with the financial support of the United States Government. Regarding the innovation, citizens would not be able to use fraudulent or nonstandard passports. Illegal migration, human trafficking and organized crime will be detected immediately.

Representatives of the IOM said that the work of border police will become easier. They will detect fraudulent documents and have a database of people entering and leaving the country.

Goderdzi Latsoshvili, expert for the IOM informational technologies, gave more detailed information regarding the situation in his conversation with the Human Rights Centre.

-Mr. Goderdzi, what is the purpose of the personal identification and registration system at the border crossings?

G. L. The project was financed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the US Department of Homeland Security. It is a registration system that stores information on people who cross the border. The system was installed at the Red Bridge (Azerbaijani-Georgian border), Tbilisi Airport, Batumi and Poti Ports, Sarfi (Turkish-Georgian border), and the system will soon be installed at Sadakhlo (Armenian-Georgian border).

The system can scan and read the passport automatically… It can also check the documents with an ultraviolet ray to detect whether the passport’s protecting features have been falsified. Afterwards, the information will be saved along with the passport photo. When a person crosses the border for the second time, the system will automatically bring up detailed information about the person on the screen. The operator will be able to compare data. The speed of registration will increase because the information will be recorded automatically.

-So, the registration system at our border will be similar to the system that has been used abroad for a long time, that is, a special network saves all the information about every person who crosses the border.

G. L. Yes, you are quite right. Besides that, we will detect fraudulent documents. For example, if a person pastes his photo in another person’s passport and attempts to pass it off as his own, he will no longer succeed, as often happened before. The computer will detect the violation with the help of special software that verifies the picture in the passport is the same at every crossing.

-There is no exact statistics of immigrants in the country. Will the introduction of the system guarantee the existence of exact data base?

G. L. There is also analytic software that will help the custom employees find information about every person who crosses the border. It is clear that a similar system will be the best source to detail the picture of migration. Besides, it will now be possible to estimate from which country immigrants arrive to Georgia.

-It was impossible to detect whether the person, who crosses the border was deported or not. Will the new system work in this direction, too?

G.L. The system envisages several classifications; deportation is one such classification. If necessary, it should be easy to find out how many people were deported and why. Similar timely information will exist on wanted people.

-Very often people crossed the border with another person’s passports. It was not very well handled. How will the new system detect similar violations?

G. L. …The border guard can compare the person with the passport visually. The computer cannot compare them.  Once the passport has been entered into the database, it will be possible to identify whether the person is the legal owner of the document or not.

-There used to be the facts when people traveled abroad as tourist, but they remained there and sent their passports back to Georgia in order to register them at Georgian customs to pretend that they returned home. What will happen regarding this situation?

G. L. The passport is stamped at the custom house and registered in the computer as well. If there is a stamp in the passport but the computer does not have any information about the stamp, it means that the person has not in fact returned to Georgia. In this case, the stamp [would be presumed] false.

 -Those people who stamp the passport can also register it in the computer.

G. L. It should impossible. Every person who works with the computer has his own password and it will show who has registered the fraudulent data...

Eka Gulua