Hi-techface recognition gates at suspended

Manchester Airport’s Terminal One hi-techface recognition gates were suspended after they allowed a man back into the country on his wife’s passport. It is understood an immigration officer double-checking the data on a computer picked up the blunder and the man was stopped before he left Manchester Airport’s Terminal One. The couple are thought to have swapped passports accidentally. The woman could not pass through the gates, which match a face to a digital photo stored on ‘chipped’ passports.

High-tech face recognition gates at Manchester Airport were suspended after they allowed a man back into the country on his wife’s passport It was the second recent security problem at the airport.

Yesterday the UK Border Agency confirmed that the face recognition gates, used by passengers returning to the UK, were taken out of action for two days earlier this month after the passport incident.

Officials say they were reopened after tests confirmed the technology was working correctly. Brodie Clark, of the border agency, said there was no breach of security or immigration control and that the gates ‘are used in conjunction with manual checking by border officials and in this case both individuals were stopped by the immigration officer responsible for supervising the gates’.

The effectiveness of the gates could be compromised by ‘unreliable technology’ but bosses insisted that the facial recognition technology at Manchester Airport was ‘among the best performing of all UK ports’. The gates were rolled out to other UK airports following a trial at Manchester. So far, more than three million passengers have passed through the gates.

Extract from Daily Mail