The International Civil Aviation Organization Public Key Directory (ICAO PKD) is a
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...
maintained by the
International Civil Aviation Organization
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
holding national
cryptographic
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...
keys related to the authentication of
e-passport information.
The ICAO PKD content is open to the public, and can be downloaded for free at https://download.pkd.icao.int/.
Participants
The
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
became the first non-state participant in October 2012, enabling issuing of
e-UNLP, the electronic form of the
United Nations laissez-passer.
In December 2014, ICAO reported the PKD as having 45 participants.
In 2015 the German
Bundesdruckerei (German Federal Printing Office) won the
request for tender
An invitation to tender (ITT, also known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business activ ...
of the ICAO to provide the ICAO PKD.
In July 2017, ICAO reported the PKD as having 58 participants.
As of November 2017, 60 participants were part of the ICAO PKD, with the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
being the 60th member and at the same time the second non-state participant.
As of December 2024, 101 participants were part of the ICAO PKD.
Participation Fees
Each ICAO PKD participant needs to pay a one-time registration fee and annual fees. The registration fee was
USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...
56,000 at first, and was reduced to USD 15,900 since March 2015.
The annual fee comprises two components: the ICAO portion and the PKD Operator portion. Every participant pays the same amount of annual fees.
See also
*
Passenger name record
A passenger name record (PNR) is a record in the database of a computer reservation system (CRS) that contains the itinerary for a passenger or a group of passengers travelling together. The concept of a PNR was first introduced by airlines that ...
*
Passport
A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that certifies a person's identity and nationality for international travel. A passport allows its bearer to enter and temporarily reside in a foreign country, access local aid ...
**
Biometric passport
A biometric passport (also known as an electronic passport, e-passport or a digital passport) is a passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip, which contains biometrics, biometric information that can be used to authenticate ...
**
Machine-readable passport
A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s. Most ...
*
Public-key cryptography
Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...
References
External links
ICAO PKD entry pageICAO PKD (Public Key Directory) data download
Travel technology
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