Jaunted

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Dystopia Travel: British Airports Getting Face Scanners

Turns out the United States doesn't have a monopoly on intimidating border technology. Passengers arriving in the UK will be met by automated face scanners starting this summer. Spooky.

The system will only work for UK and EU citizens with biometric passports--everyone else will have to stick to the regular immigration checks. Officials say the machines can do a better job at recognizing people than humans, though they also mention that:

The technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives"--innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

At least you won't have to deal with a surly border cop!

Related Stories:
· Face Scans for Air Passengers to Begin This Summer [Guardian, via]
· Airport Security coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: James Cridland]