FindBiometrics is in Tampa this week reporting live from FedID 2018, the US government’s flagship biometrics conference. On day two of the exhibition, I stopped by the NEC booth to speak with Benji Hutchinson, Vice President of Federal Operations, NEC Corporation of America. Our conversation began with a review of what NEC is showcasing at…
Biometric border control is not a new concept. At its most basic level, in fact, border control has always been biometric, with authorities comparing travelers’ faces to the images in their passports and other identity documents. That work was done by humans, of course, but the technological sophistication that has been attained in the field…
The US Customs and Border Protection agency is using a recent bust to highlight the advantages of its escalating use of facial recognition technology at US airports. As the CBP tells it, only a couple of days after this technology was implemented at the Washington Dulles International Airport, it found that a 26-year-old traveler coming…
The biometric border control market has been growing for nearly 20 years, with recent innovations in strong authentication technologies spurring impressive growth rates, and and CLEAR is at the forefront of the industry. FindBiometrics President Peter O’Neill recently spoke with Caryn Seidman Becker, Co-Founder and CEO of CLEAR. The following interview begins on the topic of…
Sydney Airport and Qantas’s trial of facial recognition technology for passengers is now underway. First announced this past February, the program is meant to allow travelers to board their flights without presenting physical documentation: Instead, their faces would be scanned and matched the flight manifest, with automated terminals allowing them entry to the boarding area.…
Huawei has retooled its airport ICT solution and is showcasing it at this week’s CEBIT 2018 exhibition in Germany. Dubbed Smart Airport 2.0, the solution focuses on linking video surveillance, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things to improve efficiency at airports. As Huawei explains it, the advantages of this platform are manifold…
The air travel industry’s trend toward biometric technology is poised to pick up altitude with the announcement that the World Travel & Tourism Council has partnered with the International Air Transport Association to pursue biometric passenger identity solutions. For the WTTC, the partnership appears to be a natural next step as it continues to proselytize…
Researchers at the University of Manchester are proposing the use of gait recognition in airport screening. As detailed in a recent report in the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) journal, the researchers, led by The University of Manchester’s Dr. Omar Costilla Reyes, developed a system that can operate through floor sensors,…
This year’s International Transport Forum Summit was held in Leipzig last week, and the head of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) took the opportunity to once again call for an embrace of biometric technologies for traveler processing. While governments around the world are increasingly looking to such technologies as a means of improving…
Argentina’s Buenos Aires Ezeiza International Airport is now using biometric passenger processing thanks to Vision-Box technology. The automated eGates are currently being used to process individuals in possession of an Argentinian passport who are 18 years of age of older and re-entering the country. The eGates use facial and fingerprint scans to match Argentinian adults…
Gemalto is providing further details on its BIOMIG project in Colombia. Commissioned by Migración Colombia, the initiative is being led by Gemalto and its local partner Incomelec SAS, with a technological assist from CMITech. The project revolves around iris recognition, with Colombian citizens aged 12 and up able to enroll their biometrics at any of the…
“In a statement, MCO officials framed the move as one that will improve efficiency and traveler experience, asserting that its biometric initiative with British Airways reduced passenger processing to just 15 minutes per traveler.” The Orlando International Airport (MCO) is aiming to become the first in the country to fully deploy the US Customs and…
SITA will soon bring its biometric passenger processing technology to the Hamad International Airport, in Qatar, with the parties having just signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on advanced passenger processing solutions. The agreement will see SITA implement 62 of its biometric check-in kiosks at the airport, as well as the deployment of biometric…
Israel’s implementation of a national biometric ID program is causing serious delays at the country’s main airport, reports Haaretz. Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, approved the implementation of the biometric ID program earlier this year amid some controversy, with the law coming into effect on June 1st. As Haaretz reports, travelers arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport have…
“…NEC has revealed that the project uses its NeoFace cloud-based biometric matching technology, and its NeoFace Express device.” NEC technology is being used in the US Customs and Border Protection agency’s biometric exit trial program at the Washington Dulles International Airport, the company has announced. The project came into action near the start of this…
The TSA has started testing out a biometric boarding system at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Denver International Airport. The system is designed to replace travel documents with fingerprint scans, and launched as a pilot project today. Interested participants are being recruited from TSA PreCheck, a biometric pre-screening program aimed at helping participants to move…
“The system uses Cognitec’s FaceVACS-Entry technology, which scans passengers’ facial biometrics and compares them to the images in their respective passports and ID documents.” The use of biometric passenger screening is paying off at the Venice Marco Polo Airport. It was initially introduced back in July of 2015, with airport IT specialist N-Aitec implemented Cognitec’s…
Qatar’s Hamad International Airport is offering automated biometric passenger screening to Qatari residents, and Iris ID technology provides the system’s biometric backbone. The system is, of course, based on iris recognition, with passengers required to place their passports on a document reader at an initial screening gate, and to undergo iris scans at a final…
Delta Air Lines is getting ready to try out biometric baggage checking. The airline has announced that the technology is being installed as part of a $600,000 baggage drop system to be launched at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this summer. One of the four new machines will feature facial recognition allowing it to match…