The back of the new national identity card features a visible electronic stamp (CEV) in the form of a two-dimensional barcode.

 

This stamp guarantees the document's authenticity.

 

The visible electronic stamp contains information about the document holder and the document itself.

 

This information is as follows:

• family name
• first and middle name(s)
• sex
• nationality
• country of birth
• type of document
• document number

 

The CEV is a new security feature on the identity card.

 

Information about the holder and the document is sealed by an official electronic signature which guarantees the identification of the issuing body (the French government) and the integrity of this information.

A reader (such as a scanner or barcode reader) that reads the data and verifies the electronic signature can ensure that this data, and only this data, is accurate. Users of this reader will then be able to check whether the information printed on the document matches what the CEV contains. This is an additional security feature to protect against the risk of identity card falsification.

 

The CEV can be read by any smartphone reader, but only certain readers actually verify the government’s signature.

 

While a simple barcode reader application on a smartphone (such as for a QR code) is capable of reading the information contained in the CEV, doing so is not sufficient to ensure the authenticity of that information. To do this, you need an app that can:

• check the certificate and certification authority of the CEV
• reconstruct the electronic signature using the public key associated with French identity documents (derived from the "CSCA France") and the document's signature certificate.