Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has provided iPhones to its Border Force officers to perform fingerprint biometric checks of foreign travellers at all international airports, according to iTnews.
The smartphones were trialed at Brisbane International Airport in 2017, and have now been rolled out to an unknown number of the 6,000 ABF officers, to perform identify confirmation in less than 60 seconds. The program is called Enhanced Biometrics at the Border (EBatB), and replaces bulky biometric scanners which the Force had previously used. A portable fingerprint scanner plugs into the bottom of the devices to allow checks of travelers flagged by other airports for further checks. The check returns passport, travel document, and visa information of travelers, as well as whether they appear among the 700,000 people on the department’s alert list. The Australian Signals Directorate has only approved Apple’s iOS for its cryptographic evaluation program, though the agency is currently evaluating Samsung’s custom Android OS for Galaxy S9 and S9+. Australia has performed biometric checks for visitors from more than 40 countries for several years. The country has not yet implemented the new biometric smart gates from Vision-Box it plans to use for arrivals, although it did recently move forward with a departure gates deal with the company.
