CIEscan

Christian Auer

About this app

CIEscan captures identity documents on the phone. The Italian electronic identity card (CIE 3.0) and ICAO 9303 passports are read from the chip over NFC; the Italian driving licence is read from a photograph. Everything happens on the device, with no network connection.

THREE DOCUMENT TYPES
You switch at the top, in the header. Each type has its own screen and its own colour, so it is always visible what is being read.
• Identity card: the six-digit CAN, bottom right on the front
• Passport: number, date of birth and expiry date from the data page
• Driving licence: a photograph of the front

Nothing can be read without the document in your hand.

PHOTOGRAPH INSTEAD OF TYPING
The key can be read off the document instead of typed. For the passport the three check digits of the machine-readable zone are verified, so the recognition is confirmed before the document is held against the phone. Typing remains possible at any time, with a dedicated keypad for the CAN.

DATA SHOWN
• Given names and surname, date and place of birth, sex, nationality
• Document number, date of issue and expiry, issuing authority
• Residence and tax number, where the document carries them
• Facial image, if the full read mode is chosen

AUTHENTICITY CHECK
For chip documents it runs entirely offline, against certificates shipped inside the app. No directory, no revocation list, no lookup.
• Passive authentication: the hashes of the data groups read are checked against the card's signed security object, its signature against the document certificate, and that against the Italian root authority.
• Chip authentication: the card proves the chip is the original and not a copy of the data.

For the driving licence there is nothing to verify — the photograph is the only source. Such records therefore carry no authenticity seal, but the note "unverified", in the app and in the report. What has been verified and what was read from a photograph can never be confused.

FOR PROFESSIONAL USE
• No account, no sign-in, no setup. Open the app, hold the document against the phone.
• No network needed: in a basement, at the roadside and out of coverage it works the same.
• One record per person. Read the same person again and the data is merged rather than duplicated.
• The list is ordered by day and time, so a read can be tied back to a specific job.
• Export as readable text or as JSON, into an existing report template or line-of-business application.
• Interface in German, Italian and English, selectable in the settings, independent of the phone's language.
• Large touch targets, no scrolling on the main screens, readable at enlarged system font sizes.

ARCHIVE
Documents that have been read stay encrypted on the device for 30 days and are then deleted automatically. Several records can be selected and exported together.

DATA PROTECTION
• The app has no internet permission. Nothing is transmitted.
• The data stays on the device only, encrypted with a key in the Android Keystore that cannot leave the device.
• No analytics, no advertising, no tracking.
• Photographs are taken with the system camera app. The app requires no camera permission, the picture is deleted after processing, and text recognition runs on the device.
• Data leaves the app only on an explicit export. The facial image travels only with the e-mail of the readable version; in sharing, in the clipboard and in the JSON version it is never included.
• At first start, three sentences state what stays on the device, what to say to the person concerned, and what the operator is responsible for.

REQUIREMENTS
A phone with NFC and Android 6.0 or newer. For the identity card and the passport the document needs a chip; paper documents have none. The driving licence is photographed and needs no NFC.

This app is not an official service of a public authority.

What’s new

The chosen language now also applies inside sheets and menus. If you picked Italian or English in the settings, the share sheet and the menu still followed the system language. Shared and emailed reports were always correct — only the labels were not.
On tablets and unfolded devices the app can now be used in landscape. On phones it stays in portrait.