Imperial ID

An Imperial ID is an encrypted form of identification encoded upon a card or other medium that is used within the Imperium containing secure information about a person that clearly distinguishes their identity.

Description

Also known as the "Universal ID," or more often just the "Universal", this contains authenticated identity information about a person, such as fingerprint, name, date of birth, holographic photo, and so on. This info is encrypted on the card, the encryption being updated every day or so based on an internal clock and computer. Normally, most transactions just go through a person's comm, which has links to the necessary databases—bank account, passport control, etc. In cases where a more secure ID is required, however, the Office of Imperial Records also is queried, which in turn queries the person's Universal, decrypts the information there based on the current day-and-date code, and can thus provide backup identification. A Universal is free on most Imperial worlds, but it can be a troublesome process to replace one that has been lost or stolen.

References

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller. Marc Miller's Traveller (Imperium Games, 1996), 66.