The General Assembly of OIPC-INTERPOL held its 85st Meeting in Bali (Indonesia) from 7 until10 November 2016 and, among other actions, supported the extension of the I-Checkit programme for the maritime industry as part of a series of measures to increase border security and better monitor passengers.

I-Checkit is a tool which complements and enhances national border control systemsand allows trusted members from the private sector to carry out advanced checks on passengers in real time with the cooperation of the Police force.

This tool was created to allow airlines to instantly check if a person who is going to undertake a journey on an International flight is using a passport registered on the INTERPOL database (SLTD)* as stolen or lost. When the passport is scanned, information related to the number and type of document and the issuing country is sent, but personal information is not included. The result of the checking process with the INTERPOL data base is received within half a second. In June 2014, Air Asia became the first airline to handle travel document information with the use of the INTERPOL data base (SLTD).

The 190 member states of INTERPOL passed Resolution 5 AG-2016-RES-05, concerning the application of I-Checkit in the maritime sector. Its main member in this sector is the company Carnival Corporation, which applied the system in a pilot phase over a three-month period (from August to October 2016) to four of its Princess Cruises ships.

Throughout the pilot phase travel documents belonging to 34,000 passengers were contrasted with the INTERPOL data base, to show the capacity of the system when reinforcing world security in the cruise industry.

Carnival Corporation will now incorporate the I-Checkit System in the worldwide process of registering passengers, which will facilitate a sure verification of travel documents to the SLTD data base, which contains over 69 million records provided by 175 countries. Thanks to the broadening of the collaboration agreement, the aim is to gradually apply the I-Checkit system to ten Carnival Corporation cruise lines in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

Michael O’Connell, director of INTERPOL operative support and analysis and head of the I-Checkit programme, stated that this system is basically a tool of police investigation and prevention which is vital for law enforcement agencies all over the world and that provision of the I-Checkit System to Carnival Corporation brings a greater level of security to the tourist sector, by setting an International guideline for security controls.

Bill Burke, meanwhile, maritime director of Carnival Corporation, says that the alliance with INTERPOL allows them to effortlessly increase the security of its worldwide fleet, whichamounts to a breakthrough for the company and the sector with an increase in the security and the protection of passengers and crew members.

[*] The SLTD (Database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents) is the data base of lost or stolen documents which was created in 2002, after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, to help member states to monitor their borders and protect their residents from terrorists and other dangerous criminals who use false identity documents.

Video: I-Checkit – For Your Security (INTERPOL. Press Center)

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