Australia Plans Biometric Border Control (bbc.com) 94
The Australian government is planning to allow 90% of travellers to pass through passport control without human help by 2020. From a report: With a $100m budget, it has begun the search for technology companies that could provide biometric systems, such as facial, iris and fingerprint recognition. Head of border security John Coyne said it could be a "world first." But critics have questioned the privacy implications of such a system. "Biometrics are now going in leaps and bounds, and our ability to harness the power of big data is increasing exponentially," Mr Coyne told the Sydney Morning Herald. The department of border security hopes to pilot the "Seamless Traveller" project in Canberra this summer, with rollout to larger airports scheduled to be completed by spring 2019.
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We have passports with chips and automated gates at airports but the change being proposed now it to not require the passport. The gates would work entirely off biometric data.
US Beat them to it (Score:1)
The NSA regulary takes my biometric data, such as, the size of my anal cavity.
They're already doing that to an extent (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides the Orwellian aspect of the whole thing what I miss most is having my passport stamped.
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There's a digital stamp going into a computer somewhere recording when you entered the country if that makes you feel any better.
Re: They're already doing that to an extent (Score:2)
The US and UK have something similar. Automation and biometrics have been going on for years at our country's borders. For island nations it's basically impossible for most people to enter/exit the country anonymously. I'm not sure what the critics are whinging about in this case because they do seem a little late to or detached from the game.
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I went to Australia two years ago and passport control was pretty much all automated.
That's not biometrics. That's scanning a passport and making sure you like like your picture. Nothing more. It's also quite common in many countries.
Biometrics would be going in and doing an iris scan rather than showing your passport. That also wouldn't be a first, and I believe you can do that on the Canadian boarder, and I've seen the systems also at Schipol Airport.
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That's not biometrics. That's scanning a passport and making sure you like like your picture. Nothing more.
Facial recognition isn't biometrics? That the "database" is a file of 1 for the current system and a national database for the new system doesn't make a difference to the fact it is biometrics.
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My own sister can't tell my brother and I apart and we're not twins the only reason she doesn't have trouble now is because we wear our hair different and only one of us wears glasses even our friends had trouble telling us apart until we were in our 30s.
I have no faith in facial recognition...
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What are the odds that someone randomly stealing your passport would find it useful? What are the odds a human border agent could tell the two of you apart? Biometrcs aren't supposed to be a magic answer, just a way to help automate the process.
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If I decided to impersonate my brother or he impersonated me someone that had never met us before would probably never be able to tell just from any type of picture ID. My brother isn't the only person I have been mistaken for I have a very common face shape, nose, and other features. A police description is even more worthless when you are the average guy about 5'10 170lb with brown eyes, brown hair, wearing common nondescript clothes like bluejeans and t-shirt with no visible tattoos, scars, or jewelry yo
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Sounds like the automatic system would be just as good as a human looking at your passport, then? I think that's all they're going for here.
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A finger print would be more practical and reliable than facial recognition... I'm not sure about the accuracy of iris scans although I imagine it would be harder to fake.
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Fully automatic fingerprint matching is harder than you might expect. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it would be easier or more reliable. I'd like to think those options were compared rationally as part of the project, but government so maybe not. I do think people see fingerprinting differently, perhaps as more intrusive or as something you only do to criminals. I remember an outcry when the US announced it would do some fingerprinting at the border.
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Of course biometric data security simply present the new problem. People can pretty much steal your identity in reality by the simple exchange of a few bytes of data. Those particular bytes being the ones that match your biometric data to your legal identity. So to steal your identity, they just need to point your legal identity to their biometric data and you are hosed, seriously, proving that theft would require major legal effort in a world driven by that biometric data. There is also the idea of hacks t
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Australia should build a wall! (Score:5, Funny)
There will be some controversy about which country will pay. For example, who pays for the wall along the Australia-Canada border?
Re:Australia should build a wall! (Score:4, Funny)
The advantage of the sharks is it keeps the rednecks from Tasmania off the main land too.
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Australia should build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants!
Don't give them ideas. 100 people arrive by boat the entire entire country stops to have a major political discussion about it, followed by towing them and dumping them on another country's beach.
Privacy? What privacy? (Score:2)
from the ./ summary:
Why? The proposal is to make border control more efficient and accurate; They already check to see who you are when you enter or leave the country and you are required to show ID. You have no privacy now. Next, you will continue to have no privacy but transiting the the border will be faster and terrorists and other criminals faking their identities will be more easily detected.
If you oppose a government policy, the
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If you oppose a government policy, then change the law, don't handicap its enforcement.
Conversely, and arguably more importantly: If you can't get sufficient consensus in favor of the law to ensure that it will be enforced efficiently and uniformly, don't pass it in the first place!
Of course repealing the law would be the best approach, assuming it can be done. In the meantime, however, when a bad law can't be changed handicapping its enforcement is a far better option than simply giving up and letting others with no regard for your rights do whatever they please.
Re:Privacy? What privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing the main concern among the listed methods is fingerprints. Unlike some other biometric identifiers, fingerprints linger, and they get picked up at places like crime scenes. Given the questionable standards of forensic analysis in criminal cases in recent years, the potential fishing expeditions when fingerprints are found in connection with serious crimes, and the scary potential consequences if you're involved in a case of mistaken identity, I can entirely understand why some people would be hesitant about giving any government their fingerprints (or a DNA sample, for the same reasons and more).
Something like an iris scan seems significantly less problematic from that point of view. It's still a useful identifier for practical purposes, but it lacks the persistence of fingerprints or DNA, it lacks the ability to identify covertly at a long distance like a voiceprint, facial recognition or gait analysis, and crucially, it will probably continue to lack those risks for a considerable time, because physics.
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Sorry, you're quite right, it was retina scanning that I was thinking of.
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from the ./ summary:
total 96K ./ ../ .cache/ .config/ .local/ .npm/ .bash_history .bashrc .gitconfig .mysql_history .nano_history .nan
drwxr-xr-x 6 4.0K Jan 24 13:42
drwxr-xr-x 8 4.0K Jul 28 14:34
drwx------ 3 4.0K May 27 2016
drwxrwxr-x 4 4.0K Jun 28 2016
drwxrwxr-x 3 4.0K May 27 2016
drwxrwxr-x 808 32K Jun 28 2016
-rw------- 1 4.4K Jul 13 2016
-rw-r--r-- 1 3.5K May 17 2016
-rw-rw-r-- 1 51 May 17 2016
-rw------- 1 51 Jun 28 2016
-rw------- 1 8 Jul 12 2016
-rw-r--r-- 1 8.5K May 17 2016
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terrorists and other criminals faking their identities will be more easily detected.
Objection. Assuming facts not already in evidence.
They already check to see who you are when you enter or leave the country and you are required to show ID. You have no privacy now.
That assumes the border database is inaccessible to all other governments and government organizations. Again, something that hasn't been shown to be true.
Most likely, the database will be open to all law enforcement, and if so, the privacy of someone not at the border would be reduced by this system.
We already have this in Canada. (Score:1)
Yaaaaay biometric security! (Score:3)
Authentication credentials that can't be hashed, can be stolen off your body, and can't be reset at will - but they do change with age, so maybe you can wait it out?
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Yes. Then again, it's not really a biometric if you don't need a living human to gather the metrics. Biometrics would be fine if that's what we had. But we don't. The systems are not tied to living entities in any meaningful way. The whole idea of "stealing" a biometric proves the falsity of the claim. My friends use biometrics all the time with great success to recognize me. But that's because they are really using biometrics, and not a cheap imitation.
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Authentication credentials that can't be hashed, can be stolen off your body, and can't be reset at will - but they do change with age, so maybe you can wait it out?
I think those in favor of biometric identification consider that features, not bugs. If it wasn't cost prohibitive they'd probably like to make a DNA swab of everyone too. You leave them by accident at crime scenes, you can extract them from anyone against their will even if they're migrants that have burned all their ids and while you might fool the odd scanner they're ridiculously hard to genuinely lose or forge which is why you occasionally see cold cases solved decades later. And practically you can onl
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This is the most insightful post thus far. Someone please mod AC up to visibility.
The UK eBorders does this (Score:2)
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And it's the biggest cluster fuck you can imagine. Only registered travellers over the age of 18 get to use it. Every one else gets to join an EVEN LONGER QUEUE because they can't be bothered to lay on sufficient staff to process people coming through. Entire families stuck in a fucking queue for over an hour thanks to electronic borders. Progress.
Only an hour? That would be a dream come true in the US.
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What border? (Score:2)
Australia is the worlds largest island - it doesn't have a border
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Right, currently, in Australia, there are automated border gates, just like the ones in the UK and the US. I personally object to them because I do not wish to donate a dozen "perfect" photographs each year (I travel regularly) to the government's facial recognition training database.
Just look down when they take the picture, it will spit your card back out and tell you to go to the desk. This has happened to me several times by accident because I get bored and look away before it has finished.
This proposal is to extend the scheme to domestic travel (Canberra has no regular scheduled international flights)
Un-true! There are now 8 flights a week, 4 to Wellington and 4 to Singapore. Hardly a major hub, but they are regularly scheduled.
Fingerprints should never be used for biometrics (Score:4, Interesting)
>"With a $100m budget, it has begun the search for technology companies that could provide biometric systems, such as facial, iris and fingerprint recognition."
The gov should not have fingerprint registration data (which will be horribly abused). Facial and iris are not good choices either...
There is only one safe and practical biometric I know of- deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Example: http://www.m2sys.com/palm-vein... [m2sys.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Stand up for your rights, people... and the rights of your children. Once you give fingerprint or DNA data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws- it will go into huge databases and shared between all agencies and used however they want for as long as they want. Even worse, with every crime investigation, you will be searched without probable cause.
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Stand up for your rights, people... and the rights of your children. Once you give fingerprint or DNA data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted
Don't go to Japan then, they take your fingerprints on entry (started in around 2007).