Government ID, Smart Cards, Identification and Authentication

Australia to implement biometrics at borders

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Since 2002 Australia has been testing biometric technology at its airports for use with Qantas staff. However, Australian Customs Service has announced that by June 2009 there will be biometric gates at all international airports in the country.

The facial recognition systems, called SmartGate, have been implemented at Brisbane, Cairns and Melbourne airports and are available for those citizens using e-passports.


Australia decided to take the proactive approach in easing traveler processing time as its forecasts show annual traveler numbers at Australian airports will reach nine million by 2016.

The SmartGates work by crosschecking the data scanned from the chip in an e-passport with the data obtained from an image of the person. The SmartGates will also be available for use by New Zealanders with e-passports.

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Morpho announced that Australia’s Customs and Border Protection Service signed a five year agreement for service of the SmartGate automated biometric security checkpoint solution.

The SmartGate technology operates in real-time utilizing facial recognition hardware that compares the captured data of a traveler to the data contained on the chip embedded on his e-passport. Australian Customs and Border Protection Service says that implementation of Morpho’s solution has proven to be a successful way for Australian Border Protection agents to cope with growing traveler numbers while improving traveler experience at borders and maintaining the high-levels of security they demand.  

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The UK Border Agency has announced intentions to require applicants applying for six-month stays from outside the European Economic Area to use biometric residency permits starting at the end of February 2012, according to an HR Magazine article.

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Research In Motion (RIM) has partnered with Tapit, a Sydney based NFC marketing company, to launch a campaign in Australia that uses NFC-enabled posters and tokens to share content for BlackBerry users.

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Privacy advocates in Canada have been raising concerns over the risk involved in two new biometric programs from the government that result in the sharing of private biometric data with other countries’ governments and possibly private corporations, according to an Embassy Magazine article.

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The Philippine Government has decided to rely on a biometric system to ensure only families that legitimately qualify for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Grant are receiving the financial aid, according to a Business World Online article.

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New Zealand’s government has passed legislation to enable Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to store photos of all non-New Zealanders entering the country as well as require fingerprint samples in some circumstances.

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