Welcome To Australia: No More Passports & Biometric Identification
The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection has sought technology that would abolish incoming passenger cards, remove the need for most passengers to show their passports and replace manned desks with electronic stations and biometric identification.
The plan goes much further than the SmartGates technology currently installed at some airports that require passports to be scanned electronically. Those gates, introduced less than 10 years ago, will be retired as part of the new “contactless” system.
Instead, passengers will be processed through a biometric recognition system, matched to existing data. By 2020 the government wants a system in place to process 90% of travellers automatically, with no human involvement.
John Coyne, head of border security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told the Sydney Morning Herald: “I think it could be a world first,”. He said it was the long-term vision of the most senior immigration bureaucrats to “streamline” the arrivals process so international passengers could “literally just walk out like at a domestic airport”.
However, even though the government knows what it is looking for, it doesn’t know what it’s going to get. “The department is asking tenderers to provide innovative solutions to allow arriving travellers to self-process,” an immigration spokeswoman said. “The department has not therefore defined the specific solution or how it will differ from existing arrivals or departures SmartGates.”
“Biometrics are now going in leaps and bounds,” Coyne said. “Our ability to harness the power of big data is increasing exponentially.”
The department wants to pilot the technology in July at Canberra Airport, which handles limited flights to Singapore and Wellington. It would be introduced at a major airport such as Sydney or Melbourne in November, with the rollout completed by March 2019.
The innovation was possible because of the massive amount of passenger data, including ticket information, travel history and criminal records, sourced globally and analysed in the back room, Dr Coyne explained.
He said Australia was “miles ahead of the majority of countries” in modernising airport technology, particularly compared with the US or London’s Heathrow.
In previous statements, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said advancements in border technology would enable Border Force officials to concentrate resources on passengers of interest.
Dr Coyne said it was all about “selective permeability”, or using intelligence to determine in advance which types of passengers posed a risk, and getting everyone else through more efficiently. “All of this is about risk,” he said. “I think in Australia we’re doing exceptionally well.”
In Israel, citizens can have passport check-up either by regular passports or by the new biometric passports.
Seamless Bio Electronic Devices:
Biometric Security: From A Selfie To the Way You Walk:
