New Minutes Suite To Debut @ JFK Airport

 

 Travelers passing through a busy airport terminal bogged down and tired may be happy to pay for a private room to nap, relax or work. Enter Minute Suites, a chain of airport locations offering private suites for travelers to rent. Soon, passengers at JFK will have a new location to relax.

 Minute Suites announced a new location coming to New York Kennedy’s Terminal 4. The new location will be in the B Concourse, home to a number of Delta and international-airline flights.

When the location opens in 2020, travelers will be able to book one of the seven suites or the private shower room. Each room will be stocked with the standard Minute Suites amenities: a leather napping couch, work desk and television.

Currently, there are six Minute Suites locations open in four different airports:

• Atlanta (ATL): Concourse T and Concourse B
• Charlotte (CLT): atrium
• Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW): Terminal A and Terminal D
• Philadelphia (PHL): AB Connector

Plus, there’s a new location coming soon to Baltimore/Washington International Airport.

The typical cost for Minute Suites is $42 for the first hour, plus $10.50 per 15 minutes up to $84 for two hours. After two hours, you’ll pay an additional $8 per 15 minutes until you max out at $155 for up to 8 hours.

However, all six existing locations are all part of Priority Pass program. Priority Pass members can get use their membership for a free hour stay and then pay a discounted rate of $28 per hour after the first hour.

Brand New Biometrics Scanner Detects Impostor @ U.S. Airport

A biometric facial scanner has flagged a traveler using a fake passport — less than three days after the airport system was installed. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained a traveler earlier this week after the facial recognition system brought up an ID that didn’t match the man’s passport at the Washington Dulles International Airport.

 

CBP has more

Artifical Inteligence(AI) Art Will Be At Christies In October

Portrait of Edmond Belamy, 2018, created by GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), which will be offered at Christie’s in October 23-25 2018. Image © Obvious

The work appears uncompleted: the facial features are somewhat indistinct and there are blank areas of canvas. Oddly, the whole composition is displaced slightly to the north-west. A label on the wall states that the sitter is a man named Edmond Belamy, but the giveaway clue as to the origins of the work is the artist’s signature at the bottom right. In cursive Gallic script it reads:

Image © Obvious

 

If Your Face Is Scanned the Next Time You Fly……………………HUH?

Scanned Face

There’s unsurety as to what the Government is doing with the images. They say, Facial-recognition systems may indeed speed up the boarding process, however, the real reason they are cropping up in U.S. airports is that the government wants to keep better track of who is leaving the country, by scanning travelers’ faces and verifying those scans against photos it already has on file. The idea is that this will catch fake passports and make sure people aren’t overstaying their visas. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has partnered with airlines including JetBlue and Delta to introduce such recognition systems at New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington’s Dulles International, and airports in Atlanta, Boston, and Houston, among others. It plans to add more this summer.

“As It Searches for Suspects, the FBI May Be Looking at You”). Privacy advocates also point out that research has shown the technology to be less accurate with older photos and with images of women, African-Americans, and children (see “Is Facial Recognition Accurate? Depends on Your Race”).

 

 

Australia Wants To Eliminate Passports & Replace With Facial Recognition

Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection is aiming to do away with the need for passports at its international airports by introducing systems for biometric recognition of the face, iris and/or fingerprints.

International arrivals could speed through airside without ever interacting with a human official as the new technology is expected to eradicate the need for passport checks and passenger cards. Besides making the arrival experience more efficient, officials also believe the system will be better at identifying passengers on watch lists.

While a number of airports have for several years been using so-called smart gates that prompt travelers to scan their passports upon arrival, the new system, which the government wants in place within the next three years, goes much further.

The authorities plan to trial the new technology at Canberra airport from July before taking it to a busier airport, such as Sydney and Melbourne, for further testing in November.

New Technologies At Airports For Security

The full body scanner. The most popular scanners used in airports use either X-Ray technology or ‘non-ionising waves.’ They were first implemented to reduce lines at the airport, however, recently the scanners have become troublesome. The problem is that because anything out of the ordinary would trigger an alarm requiring an airport employee to perform a pat-down, these scanners have actually started making lines worse.

Iris Scanners- Airports are now using iris scanners to keep tabs on passengers. .

The airport has domestic passengers quickly scan their iris, and then, when they reach their gate, their irises are checked again to make sure they completed the boarding process and actually made it on the plane.

RFID technology -Hong Kong International Airport are using RFID technology to track where bags go. The idea is that these tags use Bluetooth and other mobile technologies to give passengers real-time updates about where their bags are.

Height Profiling-stereoscopic cameras are placed in the ceiling. These devices track people based on their body makeup. It knows how tall people are, how far their shoulders are from their head, and other size comparison, and it uses this data to understand people’s movement patterns. It also keeps profiles on the other people you are walking with, so if you tie your shoelaces (thus changing your height profile), it will assume you’re still there because the people around you are still there.This technology gives the airport real-time data about who is moving, how fast, and what is causing a congestion. And it doesn’t give specific information about who the passenger is.

Facial Recognition-The Customs and Border Protection at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport is implementing an experimental facial recognition program. This, however, is being met with concern from privacy advocates, as the intent is to use biometric technology to catch people who are using others’ passports.

Finger Print Scanning-Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, for instance, is implementing a new system that lets passengers check in using their fingerprint.

Screen & Walk-The Department of Homeland Security is looking into a new technology called ‘screen-and-walk.’ It is a means to detect if passengers are carrying a concealed device on their person without having them take off their garments. They are expecting to have a technology that is both fast and effective. DHS is still working to build this machine, but it’s been soliciting private contractors and tech companies to further its development.

Beacons-used by marketers for the last few years as a way for retailers to engage with customers on mobile devices in real time using location. Now airports are following suit as a way to send up-to-the-minute information about flights and in-house attractions.

Augmented Reality- like beacon technology, some airports have been looking into augments reality. Airports — such as the Copenhagen Airport — have been testing out mobile apps that use GPS to push content passengers. Content includes directions for how to get to the gate, as well as interesting attractions they may wish to see.

MagRay- A device being tested in laboratories to detect the contents of a liquid. The idea is to combine an X-Ray and MRI to detect if the properties are different from a normal liquid. It’s still being tinkered with in labs, but it could make packing liquids and getting them through security that much easier.