About the OpenMRTD.org project

OpenMRTD.org is a project by Harald Welte. At this time, it is still very much a one-man effort, but it is expected to draw attention from other free software enthusiasts once machine readable passports are deployed in the real world.

In the last two years, many governments around the world have decided to adopt electronic passports including biometric identification data. Even though is questionable whether such passports are suitable means to increase security (or even fight terrorism), hundreds of millions of people will shortly have such electronic passports.

To achieve transparency, it is important to enable the bearers of such passports to inspect the digital contents of the passport, just like they can inspect the analog (printed) contents.

Also, it is quite useful to be able to check the digital signature and thus verify that a particular passport was really issued by a specific contry.

The goals are:

Web site design by Harald Welte. The current Webmaster is Harald Welte.

The project started in May 2005, when Harald was starting with his work on librfid.

There was no public announcement and/or homepage until October 2005.