Streamline Border Control with Blockchain Towards Self-Sovereign Identity

Since the mid-2000s, the digitalisation of border checks has often referred to the increased adoption of automated border control (ABC) solutions at border crossing points in all border environments from airports and seaports to land border crossings. Key prerequisites for the operational implementations of the so-called eGates have been the electronic machine-readable travel document together with biometric technologies that have facilitated the automation of much of the tasks performed by border guards at manual control booths for selected groups of nationalities. Now, the next wave of major changes is emerging with the development of electronic identification (eID), with certain implementations particularly designed for cross-border use cases supplementing and possibly replacing the traditional physical identity document in a long-term future. The evolution of eID strongly aligns with the increased demands for data privacy to ensure that individuals can better control how much information is shared about themselves, with whom and for what purpose. One possible technology to provide the so-called data self-sovereignty is distributed ledger technology (DLT), including blockchains. DLT is being developed for instance by the Linux foundation, dispensing several distributed ledger projects and associated solutions for digital and self-sovereign identity. One of these projects is Hyperledger Indy. In this study, we present a distributed ledger implementation based on Hyperledger Indy applied as a border check use case. Our aim is to investigate the suitability of DLT in providing data self-sovereign facility in border checks, and to discuss the benefits and disadvantages the technology might entail for this security domain.