Are passports on the way out?
Last month brought the much-celebrated news that those pesky green outgoing departure cards were to be scrapped. Now, it seems, the government may be looking at getting rid of even more paperwork.
Current trials of contactless biometric authentication technology, if successful, may lead to passports being phased out altogether. The technology makes use of facial recognition cameras and eye and fingerprint scanners to authenticate a passenger’s identity, making passports somewhat obsolete.
“Our goal is for 90 per cent of eligible travellers to self-process through the border by 2020,” a spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said of the new streamlined strategy.
While some experts believe the passport may not disappear for decades, given it is currently the only universal form of identification, others believe it’s only a matter of time before other countries begin seeing the documents as little more than “security blankets” for passengers.
“It’s nice to have a passport at different stages along the way because people are used to it but it’s really not necessary,” Director of Security Programs at Unisys, John Kendall, told news.com.au. “It would be nice to know you could keep your passport in your bag, have it there when you need it but not be required to pull it out every step of the process.”
And there’s a lot to be said for biometric technology – it’s a lot easier to lose your passport than a fingerprint or eye, after all – especially its security benefits. “Biometrics can be compared against extensive databases, harnessing aggregated data to confirm a traveller is who they say they are,” Kendall explained. “By analysing more complex biometric data, border security processes will be faster and more efficient, creating a better experience for passengers and adding greater security.”