By Gemma Simpson, 6 February 2007 15:30
NEWS
Birmingham Airport has launched a security system based on biometric technology.
The launch at Birmingham Terminal 1 is part of the nationwide rollout at airports across the UK of Project Iris - the Iris Recognition Immigration System - which uses iris-scanning technology to identify frequent travellers and speed up immigration checks.
Travellers who sign up to the scheme will be able to walk up to an automated barrier in the airport, look into a camera and, if the system recognises them, enter the UK.
Peter Cochrane, a silicon.com blogger and frequent business traveller, said the Birmingham iris-scanning system will offer a "huge improvement" to flyers. He added that iris-scanning is the "most reliable biometric" - and is about six orders of magnitude more accurate than a biometric DNA sample.
Cochrane said: "I think [iris-scanning] is absolutely essential unless you want to spend your life waiting in line all day."
More than 61,000 people across the UK have now registered with Iris and the system has handled more than 210,000 border crossings.
The biometric technology works by photographing a passenger's iris pattern and storing the data in a database, together with passport details.
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Iris was launched at London's Heathrow airport in March 2006. The system is currently operational at Heathrow Terminals 1 to 4, Manchester Terminals 1 and 2, Birmingham Terminal 1 and Gatwick North, with Gatwick South due to get it during 2007.
A one-off enrolment process for the Iris system takes about five minutes and is free. Registration is conducted by immigration staff in each airport's departures area.
In related news, more than 90 per cent of UK consumers have voiced their support for biometrics - and said they want banks, credit card companies, health providers and government bodies to adopt biometric technologies to verify personal identities, as oppose to other methods such as smartcards.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Graham Coles
Frankly this makes me seriously question the use of biometrics in criminal investigations.
As I understood it, iris scanning had all manner of problems when used in trials with failure to recognize people with certain colours of eyes, eye defects such as astigmatism etc. and ended up with at least 10%, maybe 20% failure rate.
This is what they call 6 orders of magnitude more reliable than DNA testing? What does that make the failure rate for DNA? 60% or worse?
Either we have been lied to about DNA or are being lied to by Iris scanning; someone's lying somewhere.
2. Robert Hedderley
Who are these 90% that are demanding biometrics? I do not recall a poll or a vote or even having the question raised in an ad hock questionnaire. All previous information on Iris Biometrics slated the poor performance of the system, so where does this incredible performance increase suddenly come from. Perhaps we are talking about 90% of the people involved in making something from the installation of Iris scanners. Will the iris scanner mitigate the chip failure of new passports or will that be another reason for a stay in a holding compound for several hours, whilst they sort out the mess.
3. John Doe
All for it, but don't trust it - given the UK gov't's history of IT project massive cock-ups ('sold' to them largely by the same bunch of equally useless-but-fast-talking big systems integrators) with overspent, late and useless systems paid for by the poor old taxpayer (nobody asked them first!), I wouldn't trust an eye scanner's results farther than I could throw a lorry.
4. Richard Peters
I for one will feel extremely silly waving a bunch of flowers in front of a bloody scanner. I ask you, what on earth has this got to do with security? Some people!