50 glorious years!

Lamaaaaaaaaaaaanye aku x update blog aku yang bertemakan orange dan black nih...kekeke! Let's see what's new in blogger? Oh, now blogger saves ur drafts automatically! Great! But do you know what's greater? Our country will be celebrating its 50 years of independence despite of some 'cakap-cakap' from a minority group who claim the freedom of speech to themselves...aih...and most of them use the blog to get their 'barking' heard! These bloggers ( smer ade, malay, indian, chinese, iban, kadazan, jawwwa, mat salleh, singaporeans pn ade... you name it!) are mostly full time bloggers and these guys really have the capabilities to influence people through their writings I can say.

People would appreciate if these kind of individuals could really step out to at least show their faces (but I bet they wouldn't) rather than critizing the country ruling sytem, slamming the ruling government (as if these critics know how to run a country ...) condemning the King....blah blah. I hope they're just more than talk the talk, and walk the walk.

You know, they keep complaining what they don't have...well they complain so much that they fail to recognize and appreciate what they've actually possessed. They fail to enjoy the one thing which to 'some' (read millions of people at the other part of the world ) is too far from reality - Freedom and Peace.(<---'Freedom' and 'Peace' are already 2 things...heh!) Sure, I can understand If they talk about all those stuffs, complaining about this and that. Sometimes they get mad when they face difficulties in life, but hey...you tell me who doesn't have problems? So what if you have difficulties living in Malaysia. Everyone does! Get over it! I personally think we're very lucky to live such a wonderful life here...Thus, in conjunction with Malaysia's 50 glorious years of independence, I'll post some articles that you might able to digest and appreciate. E-passport pride of Malaysian technology by Azura Abbas NST.


Two years before the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, the United States immigration inspectors came across something they had never seen before — a passport with a chip embedded in it.
It was a Malaysian passport, which carried a digital photograph and fingerprints of the holder.The world’s first electronic passport, it baffled the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) and its laboratory staff, said author and consultant Neville Cramer.At the time, he was still serving as special agent in charge of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, under the US Department of Justice."Inspectors came to me and said this passport is the finest thing we have ever seen. The best in the world," he said in an interview.

Then two jetliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001, hijacked by men who used fake passports to enter the US.The Sept 11 attacks triggered a desperate search by governments around the world for the right technology to make travel and identity documents more secure.

In 2003, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) set new standards for passports, including the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) microchips.The Malaysian RFID chip, which allows contactless operations of smart cards, was developed by local MSC-status company Iris Corporation Bhd.Despite concerns that the chips could be cloned, information encoded into Malaysian passports has so far remained secure. Digital keys stored on each chip made such duplication and forgery impossible, according to a company statement last year.Iris has gone on to supply its technology for smart cards and passports to a number of countries, including Turkey and New Zealand.But almost a decade after Malaysia launched its e-passport, the US, which issued its first e-passport early last year, is still trying to get it right.Cramer, who headed the first INS field test of Malaysia’s e-passport, believes that the US should adopt Malaysia’s technology."To this day, (the US) has not done it right. The chip stores a photo of the holder but not his fingerprints. It is mind-boggling that they have not utilised (Malaysian) technology fully," said Cramer, on a recent visit here to meet Home Affairs Ministry officials.


Since retiring in 2002, Cramer has written a book, Fixing the INSanity, on some of the causes of America’s immigration problems. He has also started a consultancy called Immigration Enforcement Solutions.When Cramer first came here for the INS field test, the team he led ordered 19 machines to read Malaysian passports. Within a week, they saw for themselves how well the passport’s security features worked.A man had presented a Malaysian passport, but the reader showed a woman’s face in the digitised photograph contained in the chip, he said.The photograph on the physical document had been replaced, but the one stored on the chip could not be tampered with."He confessed that he bought the forged passport from a smuggler." Sadly, Malaysia lost the chance in 2003 to help set world standards on e-passports, he said."The government should have gone to the UN, which oversees the ICAO, to tell everyone that Malaysia has already done it."Malaysians are not getting the credit for what they have accomplished."Partly, it’s because European and American technology giants cannot accept that a small country like Malaysia had beaten them to it."So they downplayed what Malaysia has," said Cramer.


Indeed, Malaysia is well ahead of the rest of the world. E-passports, he said, are the only way to speed up clearance times at immigration points and border controls, especially with air travel on the rise around the world."The world has to start embracing the use of e-passports."



Wait for another inspiring article!