Sydney Airport Launches Face Scan Check-In Trials (techcrunch.com)

The plan to replace passport check-ins with more face scans is being trialed by Quantas on passengers for select flights into the Sydney Airport starting this week. The move is an attempt to replace the "inconvenience" of relying on more traditional paper passports. TechCrunch reports: It's still very early stages in a process that isn't exactly being rolled out overnight. After all, implementing such technology for Sydney's 43 million annual passengers is pretty large undertaking, even without myriad security and privacy concerns to contend with. To start with, the technology will be utilized for select international flights, to help automate check-in, boarding, lounge access and bag drop. Moving forward, the airport also hopes to implement it for mobile check-in and customs processing. "We've worked with Qantas from the outset and are delighted to be partnering with them as we trial this technology," Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert said in a statement provided to the press. "In the future, there will be no more juggling passports and bags at check-in and digging through pockets or smartphones to show your boarding pass," he added. "Your face will be your passport and your boarding pass at every step of the process."

Comments

Idiots want a better police state.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no problem with how passports worked. So the idiots in charge want to get rid of a system which worked well and replace it with a system which WILL be fraught with problems.

This will be a mess. It will have problems with false positives and there will be issues which never happened when the old system of using passports was in place.

I guess Australians like the taste of fascist boot soles.

Re:Idiots want a better police state.

[AHuxley]

AC re "There was no problem with how passports worked."
Some nations had no working passport system. Anyone could "get" paperwork and become an illegal migrant later getting paper work in some other nation.
Random people with a criminal past would buy a fake passport. Documents to create a new passports got shared. People would create a new life in another nation and create an entire new set of paperwork.
An intelligent service of another nation is using a real passport stolen in a nation to do their own missions around the work. Real passport was issued, wrong face going on a holiday.
A new system will scan a face. Has that person been on the web supporting banned groups? Fund raising for banned groups online but presenting a different passport? Does the face match the documents presented to support getting the passport?
Did the person over stay their visa?
Did the person enter and over stay under a different passport?
Use the wrong visa application and then work for years?
Is an illegal migrant who then created a passport now wanting an international holiday?
A person using another persons documents. The face presented in 2018 does not match the locations of that other persons life story used to create an ID and then apply for a new passport.
Later applications can get more people who are trying to get around laws.
A person on government support who wants to go on an international tax payer funded holiday.
A person accepted as a real refugee in need of protection from their nation wants to go back to their own nation for a long holiday again.
A face with no funds, a bank account without the funds to support their travel suddenly has the funds to afford international travel. The face does not match their own banking, work and tax history.