Three years from now, Australia won't be checking your passport to know who you are. They would rather rely on machines and technology to answer for your identity whether you land through air or sea.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection of Australia announced that they would plan to eradicate the use of passports and have facial recognition systems and fingerprint readers in its stead. The project, called the Seamless Traveller, is seen to combat the heavy paperwork the staffs and travelers usually do when arriving.
According to ABC News Australia, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said, "In many cases that will mean people, whilst they'll still have to carry their passport, may not have to present their passport at all in the long term. He added, "But in the immediate term, this will make it easier, it will make it quicker, for people going in and out of our airports."
The country plans to have the new technology tested in the second half of the year at the Canberra Airport, while Sydney and Melbourne to wait until November. A complete rollout of the project would happen in the summer of 2019 with everyone using it by 2020.
Heightened security will also be seen when the technology runs the passengers' info. It will help identify threats in advance the when the biometrics will display passenger's travel data as well as criminal records.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute Head of Border Security, Dr. John Coyne told the Sydney Morning Herald, "I think it could be a world first." He continued to say that the "streamline" arrival of passengers could make them "literally just walk out like at a domestic airport".
Seamless Traveller has started way back in 2015 but was met with criticisms on how to execute the project and they breach rights to privacy. Coyne said, "All of this is about risk... I think in Australia we're doing exceptionally well."
