Australia Wants to Replace Passports With Biometric Scans by 2020

Conde Nast Traveler – by Katherine LaGrave

The future of travel may be here faster than we think—at least Down Under, that is. According to The Telegraph, the country is planning to eliminate those pesky passports and immigration desks and instead adopt an identification system that would verify passengers based on biometrics that recognize faces, fingerprints, and irises from information collected from citizens and foreign travelers. If all goes according to plan, experts say passengers arriving in Australia from other countries should be able to directly exit the airport like they would after a domestic flight. (Gizmodo reports that the project’s overarching goal is to have “90 percent of arrivals passing unmanned electronic stations without hassle some time between 2019-20.”)  

Yet despite the lofty ambitions of the initiative and the $75 million budget set aside for it over the next five years, it still seems a bit unclear as to how the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection will manage the overhaul. In fact, the government agency seems open to suggestion: “The department is asking tenderers to provide innovative solutions to allow arriving travelers to self-process,” a spokesperson for the immigration department told The Sydney Morning Herald. “The department has not therefore defined the specific solution.”

Still, the plan is not without its next steps: The department wants to pilot whatever technology they decide on in July 2017 at Canberra Airport, with the idea that it would then be introduced at a major airport such as Sydney or Melbourne in November, before the eventual rollout across all international Australian airports is completed by March 2019.

Despite the advances in biometric technology, it is not without its flaws. According to The Atlantic, the limited testing done on facial-recognition systems in particular has revealed a pattern of racial bias, wherein various software has had trouble with facial nuances. In December 2016, for example, 22-year-old Richard Lee’s passport photo was rejected online because the site said “subject eyes are closed.” Lee, who is of Asian descent, had his eyes open, but the automated system was unable to recognize this. Privacy advocates have also raised ethical concerns, according to The Intercept, alleging that the systems threaten the civil liberties of citizens in certain capacities, primarily as they relate to racial profiling. Despite the cons, however, biometric technology nevertheless seems the way of the future. So long, favorite passport stamps…

http://www.cntraveler.com/story/australia-wants-to-replace-passports-with-biometric-scans-by-2020