In the future, the citizen service number (BSN) will no longer appear on the front of the passport holder page, but only on the back. State Secretary Raymond Knops of the Interior and Kingdom Relations announced this on Tuesday in response to parliamentary questions by CDA MP Van der Molen. The measure should minimize the chance of identity fraud.
"I intend to remove the BSN from the MRZ (machine readable strip - editorial) and make it automatically readable on the back of the holding page of passports and identity cards. As a result, the BSN will no longer be present and copyable on the front of the holder page of the passport," the secretary of state said.
The BSN is a fraud-sensitive personal data. When the BSN is combined with personal data from other sources, such as bank and name data, the possibility of fraud arises. Dutch identity cards have the BSN on the back and driving licenses lack the BSN in the MRZ. Despite the fact that the BSN is mentioned on the back of the holder page in passports, the data is also part of the MRZ, which is still on the front of the holder page.
Controlling agencies, such as the police, work with systems and processes that are set up so that the BSN can be read from the MRZ. "I am therefore already in discussions with the relevant authorities about the time frame by which they can have adapted their processes in such a way that they can also automatically read out the BSN if it is mentioned on the back of the holder page." As soon as the secretary of state knows more about the time frame by which the passport will be changed, the House of Representatives will be informed.
Click here to read all of the Secretary of State's responses.
