Attendees at the Pan European High Security Printing Conference held in Vienna, Austria last month witnessed a heated but revealing altercation between a presenter and an audience member. The dispute followed a joint presentation regarding the undeniable and undisputed success of the upgraded Ukrainian tax stamp.

This stamp is used for all imported alcohol and tobacco products and was originally designed by the EDAPS consortium with a holographic stripe as the lead overt security feature. Recently, this has been upgraded to include a covert taggant supplied by Inksure and the fiscal success of the upgraded stamp was reported to the audience.

The fact that more tax revenue was collected and local production increased because of the protection afforded by the anti-counterfeit stamps was not disputed.  But an audience member believed strongly that the benefits derived from the associated track & trace system rather than the overt and covert features inherent in the stamp. Center-Inform, the company who developed the track & trace system for the Russian tax stamps, appeared to argue that if the tracking system was sufficiently tight at all points along the distribution chain, then the security features incorporated into the paper-based stamp were irrelevant.

In the interests of time-keeping, the heated discussion had to be cut short. But in reality, the debate will continue indefinitely as technology suppliers proclaim the merits of their own system above all others. This situation is very confusing for revenue departments, tax legislators and those who specify and design tax stamps. All features have an associated cost and how should the benefits be assessed.

A guiding principle was offered from an unrelated source. In his presentation at the same conference on the newly-designed British passport, Tony Dean from the UK Passport and Identity Service described the many security features incorporated into that document. From tactile print to luminescent fibers, from fluorescent binding thread to watermarked page numbers, the booklet seems to use every state-of-the-art security feature imaginable.

This elicited the question 'how can you train inspectors to recognise all these features in the few seconds available to them at immigration or border control?'.

The answer was precise and perceptive. 'You can't'. He explained that the philosophical goalposts have moved. Rather than attempting to identify the one perfect feature, or the ideal set of features which all authorities are trained to recognise, the new modus operandi is to employ a multiplicity of features and allow the inspectors to choose their personal favorite.

Thus, each inspector is made aware of all/most of the features but inevitably, some will place more confidence in what they can see with, say, a UV light, while others will prefer the feel of the paper etc. All they are carrying out is a first level check intended to raise a red flag. If something seems not quite right, a more thorough second level inspection is indicated.

The argument is equally well suited to tax stamps. Indeed, it has already been argued that physical stamps are now redundant because digital marking and tracking can perform the same functionality.

Our view is that both methodologies have their respective merits and the more tests that any marking system can be subjected to, the better. Experience shows that it is rarely the feature, in isolation, that proves effective. It is the awareness and inspection system surrounding it that yields the results. Neighborhood watches work because of the partial attention of the many. So digital tracking systems should be implemented but let's not abandon the paper stamp which provides reassurance to the consumer and a back up to the inspector for when the power supply fails or the internet connection goes down.