The ACS, which announced the timing of its kickoff at the Biometrics Industry Conference in Sydney today, is testing the SmartGate facial recognition system for passport verification on Qantas staff at Sydney Airport in the first phase of a project expected to lead to nationwide usage across all international air travellers.
The SmartGate system - a collaboration of Customs, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, and Passports Australia - is expected to enable participating Qantas staff to self-process every time they enter and leave the country.
"We are going to use this initial rollout of the technology to conduct a throrough evaluation of the system over the next six months," explained Joanne Churchill, manager of traveller strategies at the ACS. "Beyond that we will be considering rolling the service out to other airports, and other passengers."
According to Churchill, the system will enable the airport to increase the speed at which passengers are processed, and comply with newly enacted US laws which require countries participating in its "visa waiver" program to include biometric information in their passport verification systems.
The program was kicked off with AU$3 million in Federal Government funding aimed at developing a biometric-based identity verification system for passports. If successful the technology will be rolled out into airports across the country, and extended first to other airline staff, and then to the general public.
Although Churchill concedes there are ongoing concerns regarding the technology's ability to account for facial changes which occur naturally as part of the ageing process, she said the technology had been specifically selected to account for such changes, and would be subject to ongoing testing.
"The scanning focuses on the underlying bone structure and on points around the eyes which change little over time," Churchill said.
And while human beings are generally extremely good at recognising facial characteristics, Tim Chapman, national manager for passengers at Customs referred to studies which showed this capacity is generally limited to racial likeness. For example Caucasians are good at recognising other Caucasians, but not as good at distinguishing between Asian facial characteristics.
"The other important point is that the scanners don't get tired, so their facial recognition ability does not diminish over the course of an eight hour shift," Chapman said.
