Starting next spring, your Canadian passport will be valid for up to 10 years. But it will also feature a new electronic chip on which vast amounts of data can be stored.

Not that it will, insists Passport Canada. But it could – including personal commercial information like cars you’ve rented, hotel reservations made or your frequent flyer programs.

Eleven years after 9/11, the new passport is part of the global tightening of air travel security that is the subject of a three-day conference starting Wednesday at Montreal’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The meeting will include 33 ministers, including Canada’s Transport Minister Denis Lebel and Janet Napolitano, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

Passports will be discussed, but air freight security will also be a hot topic, said Raymond Benjamin, secretary-general of the UN offshoot organization in an interview.

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Airports focused on passenger screening after the terrorist attacks, but a terrorist attempt to send bombs in a printer cartridge on a U.S.-bound aircraft three years ago shifted some of that focus back to cargo.

Jim Marriott, chief of ICAO’s Aviation Security Branch, said in the interview that it would be “unrealistic” to screen all cargo at the highest levels.

“So if we distinguish between high-risk cargo and other cargo, it will allow us to focus security resources on what the problem is most likely to be. And the rest of the cargo goes through a lesser but still relevant (check).”

Unlike with greenhouse gas emissions, there is little conflict at ICAO between states or regions on the approach to air security or the process to reach it.

The question, though, will be about which provisions are adopted and the speed at which they can be implemented.

Many countries, notably the U.S., have moved to a system of risk-assessment for air travel – thorough intelligence vetting of passengers in exchange for easier travel.

“The U.S. has introduced its (Secure Flight) program where if you are a frequent traveller and if you have submitted a certain number of data on a voluntary basis, you will be treated differently,” Benjamin said. “You will not have to give your belt and your shoes and your computer and this and that. It’s a trade-off.”

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The invasion of privacy and voluntary surrendering of personal information is not a major issue, he added. Governments – and others – already have that information and the new system’s purpose is to red-flag problem individuals and cargo, to the benefit of nearly all travellers – less time in lineups and safer flights.

“In the early 1970s,” said Marriott, “when passenger screening was introduced (in the wake of hijackings) with metal detectors and X-ray machines for cabin baggage, the same kinds of concerns were raised. All of a sudden, the world has changed, and I’m surrendering my privacy to the state which is doing this invasive search of me. Well, there’s a responsibility that ICAO and the international community have to explore ways of making security better and more efficient.”

“Now we have a more sophisticated adversary, more sophisticated terrorists. So we need more sophisticated methods.”

Canadian passports now have a “machine-readable strip on it that contains certain data, but it’s limited,” Marriott said. “When I get a new Canadian passport next year with an electronic chip in it, that chip will have the same information and be capable of storing a lot more information about who I am.”

“The range of information is virtually unlimited – but that will be up to each individual state to select the information on the chip.”

Critics say that such information – which can be added to almost at will – is open to abuse and misuse.

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As for general easing of airport lineups and other travel congestion, Benjamin said that about 2.5 billion people fly each year, “and we’re expecting this to double within the next 10 to 15 years.”

“You cannot have 5 billion passengers with the same security system that exists today. And this is a consideration that we will discuss this week. What will be a sustainable security regime?”

“We expect from this conference a series of directions on all of these issues we have raised – on the future security system, on cargo … on security versus facilitation, on technology.”

“We have always been reacting. You had hijackings, we put screenings looking for metals – pistols, knives. Then you had bombs, so we put in the passenger-baggage reconciliation program, thinking that if a guy’s on board with his baggage, he’s not going to want to blow himself up with his luggage. Now that’s not exactly true anymore. Then we introduced the body scanners, and everybody said ‘this is terrible, it’s an image-maker, etc.’ So now we are introducing new software with a generic image (that shows only the contours of a passenger’s body, not an actual picture in graphic detail).”

As for gels, aerosols and liquids, the belief a couple of years ago that an imminent breakthrough in detection technology means that you could once again lug a big bottle of water on board an aircraft or bring that big tube of toothpaste from home in your cabin bag has been dashed, Benjamin said. It will take a few more years, he said.

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The notion of a much simplified airport experience is also more complicated than the “almost cartoon-like” depictions of people being assigned yellow, blue or red lineups, depending on an assessment of their perceived threat to security.

“You can’t go out and create a system and machine that all of a sudden can determine whether somebody is as reliable as they say they are,” Marriott said.

Benjamin added that “even if the RCMP has vetted the guy and he’s clean, you still have to have random checks because not all terrorists have records of being bad guys. In the press, you see ‘everyone said he was a very nice guy. How is it he’s done these stupid things?’ The first time is an awful time if it happens on a plane.”

Passport Canada released an explanation video this past April.

