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.

Russian Biometric Passports To Begin 2015

Russians applying for biometric passports for foreign travel will be fingerprinted beginning in 2015. The fingerprints will be added to a digital record. The  biometric data is to include prints of two fingers of the passport holder’s hands, the order published Wednesday said. Diplomatic missions abroad, which also process passport applications, will have until Jan. 1, 2016 to implement the new rules, depending on how soon they receive the necessary equipment and software.

Russia began a trial run of fingerprinting for biometric passports in Moscow and St. Petersburg last year, and the Federal Migration Service said that the practice would be implemented on a mass scale in 2015. The service currently issues two kinds of passports for foreign travel — the 10-year biometric passport and a simpler and less expensive five-year passport, which does not include biometric data.