That’s why relying on passports as the only basis of international mobility is a gift to dictatorships. The world’s democracies risk becoming the dictators’ witting enablers and need to pilot an alternative to enable the mobility of activists who lack dual citizenship.
Authoritarian regimes don’t just issue passports—they also revoke them. Even when a citizen has escaped to the “security” of overseas, they can be coerced by the dictatorship they left behind if it cancels their passport or revokes their citizenship, making them stateless.
To cross a border, a traveler must present a passport or at least be registered to one. But deference to the passport as the sole criterion for identification and international movement gives dictatorships unchecked power over their citizens. This, in turn, can be a catastrophe for dissidents who oppose these regimes and their policies.
Activists and the world’s democracies have a problem. Mutual respect for sovereignty means that governments of every type, whether a liberal democracy or a brutal autocracy, show deference to one another’s monopoly power over the movement of their citizens overseas.
Challenge
Cases
The next step is to leverage biometrics for this broader purpose. DissidentPASS is working to build a coalition among the world’s democracies for a pilot project to permit known oppositionists and dissidents without dual citizenship to travel and cross borders. This group would be identified and selected by diplomatic agreement, based on jointly set criteria and a shared list of names.
Many countries, including the United States, have taken the first step already: They use biometrics to establish and confirm travelers’ identities. But these biometrics don’t ultimately permit entry, they only make it speedier. Biometrics link back to the traveler’s legal documents and no government has yet been so bold to use biometrics in lieu of a passport.
Biometrics offer a technological solution to the passport problem faced by oppositionists who have escaped overseas but lack dual citizenship and the security of a second passport.
Solution
Our solution, developed jointly with diplomats, security officials, and technologists, is to store data in secure device environments or digital wallets, with protection assured through hardware encryption, multifactor authentication, and temporary digital signatures that prevent duplication or unauthorized access. We believe these should reduce the risk of loss or forgery of these biometrically based humanitarian digital passports while allowing for secure online authentication.
DissidentPASS aims to create a decentralized system that would store biometric data locally—on devices or encrypted personal keys—ensuring that individuals maintain full control over their data. Local storage on smartphones, smart cards, or hardware tokens can enhance convenience and security for users.
Dissidents will ask how this protects their personal data. The answer lies in avoiding centralized databases, which pose significant risks of misuse, breaches, and authoritarian control.
Technology
Decentralization
is the key
is the key
We sign this petition because we believe the democracies have both a moral and strategic imperative to reinforce the principles of human rights and mobility without compromising the principle of sovereignty.
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Open Letter
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A Petition to the World’s Democracies
Freedom is under attack from dictatorships that abuse their sovereign power extraterritorially. Dictatorships do not just crush dissent at home. They also aim to crush it abroad by inhibiting the freedom of movement of anyone who dares to oppose them.
All international travelers must present a passport or at least be registered to one. And since dictatorships both issue and revoke passports, they control the mobility of their citizens even when they have escaped to the “security” of overseas.
A dissident who has escaped to another country cannot travel internationally to speak out and oppose these regimes and their policies unless they can present a passport to immigration, border, customs, and transportation authorities.
And that is precisely the dictatorships’ intent:
Bluntly put, deference to passports as the sole criterion for identification and international movement gives dictatorships unchecked power over their citizens.
So, because the world’s democracies defer to the dictatorships’ monopoly power over the movement of their citizens overseas, they risk becoming the dictators’ witting enablers.
We, the signers of this petition, call on the world’s democracies to create an alternative to the passport by leveraging recent advances in biometric technology.
Many countries, including the major democracies, already use biometrics to establish and confirm travelers’ identities. Preapproved travelers often verify their identity using facial recognition or can clear passport-free border controls that use facial and iris biometric data.
But these biometrics don’t ultimately permit entry, they only make it speedier and link back to the traveler’s legal documents. No government has yet been so bold to use biometrics in lieu of a passport.
We call on the world’s democracies to:
We sign this petition because we believe the democracies have both a moral and strategic imperative to reinforce the principles of human rights and mobility without compromising the principle of sovereignty.
It is time to prevent dictatorships from abusing their passport power extraterritorially to silence dissent.
It is time to enable the mobility of activists who lack dual citizenship.
It is time to pilot a biometric alternative to the passport.
All international travelers must present a passport or at least be registered to one. And since dictatorships both issue and revoke passports, they control the mobility of their citizens even when they have escaped to the “security” of overseas.
A dissident who has escaped to another country cannot travel internationally to speak out and oppose these regimes and their policies unless they can present a passport to immigration, border, customs, and transportation authorities.
And that is precisely the dictatorships’ intent:
- Dictatorships can revoke passports, immobilizing dissidents.
- Dictatorships can cancel citizenships, making dissidents stateless and exposing them to deportation or, if they apply for asylum, capricious rules that may force them to remain in place for years.
- Dictatorships can attempt to seize their citizens overseas by issuing an Interpol red notice or requesting law enforcement around the world provisionally arrest their citizens and extradite them.
Bluntly put, deference to passports as the sole criterion for identification and international movement gives dictatorships unchecked power over their citizens.
So, because the world’s democracies defer to the dictatorships’ monopoly power over the movement of their citizens overseas, they risk becoming the dictators’ witting enablers.
We, the signers of this petition, call on the world’s democracies to create an alternative to the passport by leveraging recent advances in biometric technology.
Many countries, including the major democracies, already use biometrics to establish and confirm travelers’ identities. Preapproved travelers often verify their identity using facial recognition or can clear passport-free border controls that use facial and iris biometric data.
But these biometrics don’t ultimately permit entry, they only make it speedier and link back to the traveler’s legal documents. No government has yet been so bold to use biometrics in lieu of a passport.
We call on the world’s democracies to:
- Launch a diplomatic process among themselves to identify and select these individuals based on jointly set criteria.
- Permit these known dissidents without dual citizenship to travel and cross borders using only biometric data, not passports.
- Avoid centralized databases, which pose significant risks of misuse, breaches, and authoritarian control.
- Launch a decentralized system that allows these dissidents to store their biometric data locally—on devices or encrypted personal keys—ensuring that individuals maintain full control over their data.
- Permit storage of this data in secure device environments or digital wallets, with protection assured through hardware encryption, multifactor authentication, and temporary digital signatures that prevent duplication or unauthorized access.
- Ensure the highest privacy standards, such as those outlined in Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.
- Allow independent international organizations to be asked to regularly assess data security.
- Expand the provision of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that allows consulates to issue emergency travel documents to include biometric travel documents for citizens whose governments refuse to renew their passports.
- Expand the writ of major international conventions, such as the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, to cover individuals immobilized by a refusal to renew their documents.
- Create a modern biometric “humanitarian passport” under the auspices of international organizations or a coalition of liberal democracies, enabling dissidents and activists to travel.
- Extend the mandate of UN agencies to include biometric travel solutions for individuals unable to renew their passports by coordinating agreements between participating states to recognize such documents as valid for travel.
We sign this petition because we believe the democracies have both a moral and strategic imperative to reinforce the principles of human rights and mobility without compromising the principle of sovereignty.
It is time to prevent dictatorships from abusing their passport power extraterritorially to silence dissent.
It is time to enable the mobility of activists who lack dual citizenship.
It is time to pilot a biometric alternative to the passport.
Sign petition
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If you have been deprived of freedom of movement because of your passport, you can report it anonymously
Passports should provide freedom, not restrict it. If you have been deprived of your passport or threatened with its cancellation, if you have found yourself trapped because of your documents, tell us about it. Your experience will help in the fight for human rights. All stories are processed anonymously and securely.
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How you can help
You can help us on our way to our goal by spreading our ideas and signing the petition.
Our co-founders combine experiences in the worlds of dissident activism and technology, on the one hand, and diplomacy and national security, on the other. These are the diverse worlds we seek to bridge through DissidentPASS.
Evan A. Feigenbaum, a vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Founders
Contact us
If you have a question, just fill out the form below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Alena Popova, a Russian oppositionist, has run for office and been oppressed, surveilled, and repeatedly detained by Vladimir Putin’s regime, which has branded her as a “foreign agent.” Alena has spanned the worlds of politics, technology, law, and civic action. She has founded companies and been a startup investor. A women’s rights activist, she co-authored one of Russia’s first anti-domestic violence laws. Her work aims especially to counter authoritarians’ use of big data and AI for surveillance and violence.
Alena Popova
Evan Feigenbaum, a former diplomat, has been an advisor to two American Secretaries of State, a former Treasury Secretary, the CEOs and boards of leading companies, and investment funds. He served twice as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, has led several high-stakes bilateral and multilateral negotiations as the U.S. diplomatic negotiator, and received five individual and group Superior Honor Awards from the U.S. State Department. He is vice president for studies of one of the world’s leading think tanks.
Evan Feigenbaum
Deference to Passports Puts Dissidents at Risk
February 7, 2025 | Foreign Policy
Biometrics, already used in some border crossings, could help protect activists
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