Iris Scan Serves As Traveler ID At Dubai Airport

Passengers can now clear customs at Dubai International Airport by peering at contact-free iris scanners linked to the country’s extensive facial recognition database, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

The system allows for speedy trips through security at the futuristic airport, the AP reported, but it also comes at a time when observers around the world are expressing concern about the powers governments are amassing to identify individuals, even in crowds, who in some cases are journalists or political activists rather than criminals or others who pose security threats.

In the case of the United Arab Emirates, “there is no protection of civil liberties because there are no civil liberties,” Jodi Vittori, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies the UAE, told the AP.

According to the AP, the UAE has tens of thousands of cameras linked to a database tethered to powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools that make it possible for the government to track just about anyone in public — even in taxis.

Meanwhile, experts see the ability to identify passengers quickly and without contact as a way to rapidly assess vaccination status as travel resumes with the ebbing of the pandemic, the AP reported.

Nick Careen, senior vice president of airport, passenger, cargo and security at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), told PYMNTS in late January that vaccination status will be one of a number of important data points that passengers increasingly will be able to store digitally.

Even at the beginning of the pandemic, experts were predicting one long-term effect would be expanded adoption of digital personal identification systems.