Press

Press Release:

Milan, June 15^th, 2006
Electronic Passport Forum:
June 2006 event an overwhelming success

The global summit on electronic travel documents
Endorsed by the French Ministry of the Interior, the German Ministry of the Interior, and the European Commission, Wise Media’s Electronic Passport Forum went live for the third time on June 8th and 9th in Paris. Once again the event proved to be the ideal platform for experts from government, border control and law enforcement, as well as technology vendors, to discuss and learn more about the key issues relating to the introduction of electronic travel documents.

Produced by Wise Media, this year’s event welcomed 325 attendees hailing from 42 different nations. The presence of a significant number of government delegates from all continents underlined the international scope of the event. “For those representing nations currently introducing or considering the introduction of ePassports, national IDs and Visas, the Electronic Passport Forum has become an invaluable opportunity to learn from the practical experiences of others, to develop a greater understanding of the technologies and issues involved, as well as to network with suppliers”, stated Sophie B. de la Giroday, President of Wise Media, commenting on the extraordinary convergence of interests and concerns expressed by government representatives from all over the world during the forum.

The conference speakers, over 45 in all, comprised government representatives and industry experts of the highest order. These included Philippe Melchior, General Inspector within the French Ministry of the Interior, who highlighted the increasingly important role that biometrics will continue to play in our ever-evolving society, particularly underlining the additional security that fingerprint biometrics, as opposed to merely the facial biometric mandated by ICAO, will lend to the border control procedure; Martin Schallbruch, Chief Information Officer at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, who discussed the encouraging results of the ePassport interoperability tests carried out in Berlin the week before; Dr. Frank Paul, Head of Unit Large-scale IT systems at the European Commission, who outlined the three waves of introduction of electronic travel documents (ePassports, national IDs and Visas) and the subsequent consolidation of the systems deployed and creation of an overall ID management infrastructure; and Robert Mocny, Deputy Director, US-VISIT of the US Department of Homeland Security.

The Electronic Passport Forum was sponsored by ACG ID, Axalto, Sokymat, Thales, Feig Electronic, IBM, NADRA, Oberthur Card Systems, and Philips.

For further information please contact: Please contact: epassport@wisemedia.com Wise Media SpA Via R. Lepetit, 4 - 20124 Milan - Italy Phone +39 02 8903 4112- Fax +39 02 6738 8322