Identity card from 300 euros, passport for 4,000 euros

Personal documents made of plastic should be safer than those made of paper and the identification by means of an RFID chip would be absolutely forgery-proof.

This was told to us for many years. Is that really so?

In Baden-Württemberg alone, the State Criminal Police Office reports 1,600 cases of forged identity cards in 2014, 1,800 already in 2015 and 2,250 in 2016. The counterfeits were mostly from Eastern Europe and would not be visible to the naked eye.

In addition to a watermark, modern ID cards also contain so-called mottling fibers, which may have different properties and colors. However, such a security feature can only be used in paper documents. Today in identity cards and driving licenses usual plastic cards in credit card format do not offer such a possibility. They are much easier to imitate.

The only advantage of plastic cards is the merging of the individual data integrated into individual layers, so that a separation of the layers would lead to damage. But this only prevents the (mis) forgery of existing credentials but not the use of total counterfeiting.

Only document-checking devices, such as those used at airports and stationary border control stations, find such counterfeits since they are operated online and access a central data server (all ID data). In the case of checks on buses and trains, the slower network connection via mobile phone may lead to longer stopovers.

Read more https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Sind-Personaldokumente-faelschungssicher-4156899.html

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