The Principal Secretary for immigration and citizen services Ambassador Professor Julius Bitok has led a delegation of Kenyan Officials to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD) ceremony for Kenya in Montreal, Canada.
The CS was accompanied by Evylene Cheluget who is acting Director General of Immigration services.
This significant event involved the depositing of Kenya’s electronic signature for the E-passport in the ICAO PKD database, a crucial step towards facilitating electronic validation of e-Passport globally.
During the occasion they had a privilege to visit Mr. Juan Carlos Salazar the secretary general of ICAO.
The discussion majored on engaged on Kenya’s engagement in global civil aviation.
In attendance were immaculate Wambua the high commission in Canada, Mrs. Charity Musila Kenya’s alternative representative of ICAO alongside other technical officers.
ICAO PKD is a database maintained by the ICAO which holds keys related to the authentication of e-Passport information. The security and facilitation advantages of e-passport are grounded in the presence of an integrated closed-circuit chip which holds the information of the holder and electronic security features.
The advantage of e-Passport can only be realized when border control points are able to authenticates the chip.
If the chip is not authenticated at boarder control the e-citizen passport has little advantage over a traditional non-electronic passport.
Authentication of passport is a process of validating the authenticity and integrity of an e-passport by verifying the digital signature of the chip.
To authenticate the e-passport of a traveller, the receiving state must have access to certain information from the issuing state.
This would require state to exchange information through bilateral agreement.
If bilateral agreement is to be use the volume of information being exchanged would result in a highly complex and ineffective system.
In recognition of this complexity ICAO PKD provided a platform where states upload their information and download of that of other states without going bilateral way.
Each state issuing an e-passport establishes a single country signing certification authority (CSCA)as it si national trust point in the context of e-passports. The CSCA certificate containing the CSCAs public key for verification of document signer certificate (DSC) and other PKD contents must be distributed securely to ICAO to witness the import of the CSCA certificate in to the PKD facilitates the ICAO operation center.
The process by which a CSCA is imported to ICAO PKD is known as a key ceremony.
These key ceremonies are done at the ICAO HQ in Montreal by the ICAO PKD office.
The CSCA is updated every three to five years but the formal ceremony is is only done on initial submission the subsequent updates are carried out by designated technical personnel the state and ICAO PKD staff.
Kenya joined ICAO PKD in December 2022 and has up to 15 months from the joining Data to have its certificate imported.
All the preliminary managements have been done and ICAO are ready to receive Kenya for the ceremony on February 13, 2024.