The Use of Non Impact Printing in Security Documents such as Passports

摘要

When I first started to write this paper, I thought back on the time I was at a previous NIP conference in Seattle some six or seven years ago. At that time I was puzzled by the fact that no one was making the connection between NIP and document security. I knew that most of the drivers licences in the USA and Canada were using dye sublimation, a non impact process, but where was the link to other security documents? As it turns out, about 10 years ago there were very few countries using NIP to personalize any type of security document such as a passport. Australia, Germany, Finland and Japan were the only ones. I guess I was someone who was thinking like Panasonic and 1 was "slightly ahead of my time". How things have changed in only the seven years since then. To quote statistics from a paper given in April of this year at Interpol by Malcolm Cuthbertson of De La Rue Identity Systems, "--- More than 1/3 of 230 + countries are now using some sort of a digital printing system to personalize their passports and that represents 2/3 of the worlds number of passports---". So the time is now to look at this technology that is leaping forward. In order to see how far we have come it is helpful to look at where we have come from.