Facial recognition, fingerprints to replace passports at Australian airports

Australia has announced a radical overhaul of security at its international airports, with new technology set to replace passports as the means of identifying passengers by 2020.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is seeking tenders for a self-processing system that would abolish incoming passenger cards, remove the need for most passengers to show their passports and replace manned desks with electronic stations and automatic triage.

Instead, passengers will be processed by biometric recognition of their face, iris and/or fingerprints, which will be matched to existing data.

The SmartGates that electronically scan passports and that were introduced at Australian airports less than 10 years ago will be retired as part of the new system.

Immigration minister Peter Dutton said the aim was for over 90% of passengers to avoid paperwork or manual processing by staff by 2020.

“In many cases that will mean people, whilst they’ll still have to carry their passport, may not have to present their passport at all in the long term,” he said. “But in the immediate term, this will make it easier, it will make it quicker, for people going in and out of our airports.”

He added that the upgrade, worth around $78 million, would also boost security at Australia’s borders by making it easier to detect threats.

“Already we know from the money we’ve invested into biometrics collections that that is a much more reliable collection than we have with people just scanning manually passports,” he said. “So there is the ability through this technology to improve detections of people that might be coming into our country to do the wrong thing>”