Going through international airport customs is objectively a shitty experience. You’ve been sitting in a cramped seat for around 10 hours, subjected to bad airplane food and all you wanna do is have a shower and a lie down.
Luckily for you, Australia could be the first country in the world to implement biometric scanning as a substitute for paper passports.
By 2020, it’s hoped that around 90% of passengers arriving in our beautiful country will be able to walk straight out of the airport doors via a system of unmanned electronic stations.
Of course, humans will still need to intervene in the case of technicalities, travel restrictions and to dish out fines to the folks you see on Border Security who bring suitcases full exclusively of dried fish.
The new system is budgeted for $124 million over a period of five years and will take the place of the automatic passport scanning stations currently in operation. Officials are hoping to launch a pilot program at Canberra airport in July.
While it all sounds pretty flashy, the whole thing still hinges on the abilities of the private sector to make a reliable system. “The department is asking tenderers to provide innovative solutions to allow arriving travellers to self-process,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration.
It’s a pretty ballsy move when you consider the state of biometric technology and it’s current faults. As reported by The Atlantic, current implementations have shown problems with racial bias.
And while the head of border security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, John Coyne, reckons we’re pretty good at using big data, the current Centerlink clusterfuck says otherwise.
Until then, all eyes will be on Canberra’s pilot program in July.
Source: Gizmodo.
Photo: The Terminal.
