Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise? The customs officer likes my smile. He smiles back. Phew, another passage through international arrivals achieved without the slightest whiff of latex and talc. Still, these passport checks are getting longer and I don't mean the queueing. I mean the time I have to stand in front of the little booth while a uniformed gent – it …
The wearing of glasses (or indeed hats, false moustaches or Ziggy Stardust makeup) in passport photos is forbidden
Umm no, not if you are a habitual glasses wearer.
That is to say: hats, false moustaches or Ziggy Stardust makeup are forbidden for everyone, but those who normally wear spectacles should wear them in their passport photograph - even if they were the NHS frames you had twenty years ago...
That's OK provided there isn't the merest hint of any glare on the lenses, as happened to me previously.
The replacement photos, without glasses, taken in the booth at the passport office* were far worse but deemed acceptable.
*Urgent business meeting and I found my passport had expired so had to go in person.
The UK passport website has an option for uploading a photo, and it checks the acceptability. I uploaded a photo, and it was rejected for "reflection on face". There were no glasses, though it is true to say the face was reflecting light. However, there's an option for "use this photo anyway, your application may be rejected", so I used that, and the passport duly arrived.
I'm now wondering whether HMPO expects photos illuminated only by your inner glow of mystic energy, or something.
I'm now wondering whether HMPO expects photos illuminated only by your inner glow of mystic energy, or something.
So Kirlian photography can show a person's aura*. As that aura is unique, because we're all individuals, this can be used to identify the person. The method for displaying the aura may need a little work, ie-
Kirlian photography does not require the use of a camera or a lens because it is a contact print process. It is possible to use a transparent electrode in place of the high-voltage discharge plate, allowing one to capture the resulting corona discharge with a standard photo or video camera
But this is not insurmountable. A few modifications to existing airport body scanners would enable hydraulic rams that would ensure travellers are sandwiched between discharge plate and sensor. This obviously has several security advantages, ie the suspect is temporarily restrained whilst their identity is verified. If the suspect is red flagged, then the voltage discharge can be increased. Studies have shown that this is safe** and would be lower cost than the current micro-harpooning method. Furthermore, in heightened security situations, an even higher discharge could be used to greatly reduce the threat, and provide evidence from the suspect for analysis via vents and suction tubes located at the bottom of the booth.
*<spoiler>Ok, here's the missing /sarc tag</spoiler>
** safe-ish.
I'm not.
Well, I'm sorry, but if you want to travel, then your individuality needs to be modified such that it's compatible with the system. Plus there's an additional benefit to my proposal. According to science*, your aura can also identify your mood, which can thus be utilised by the AI routines to determine the charge applied. We are also evaluating groundbreaking research by Milgram et al, and the potential to apply our system to individuality adjustment.
As for eels, well, my family could provide law enforcement with an organic, sustainable alternative to both the baton and taser. Our labs are busy working on genetic modifications for land adapation and resilience. We are also developing directed energy attachments that can be far more useful than those sharks. Or prototype hybrid eel-python with carbon reinforced endoskeleton offers superior portability, throwability, conductivity and is available in an easy to carry 357cm form and can be belt carried, much like the existing colt-python.
*science-ish. Journals of parapsychology are peer-reviewed and represent the truth. Ish.
I had to renew my passport earlier this year.
I was pleasantly surprised on two counts: first that you can use your mobile to take, and upload a photo and secondly that having done just that, at 06;15 on a Monday morning, my new passport was with me by 12pm on the Friday.
I know that there is no reason why systems shouldn't work like this, but I am still pleasantly surprised when they do.
Here you still have to go in person, both to have your photo taken and to pick up the passport. The last time I went, they called me again the next day because the photo they took was later rejected. :/ Even the lady working there didn't know why exactly, but we assumed that it was probably glare or bad exposure because I shave my head, so she tried extra hard (with their really crappy light and camera) to make a decent photo. Similarly, something completely threw off the camera when they took the picture for my ID card, as the photo shows very little except a very faint silhouette of a head, a pair of eyes, a pair of nostrils and a mouth (but that one was somehow accepted). Fortunately I don't have to show it very often, because there's always a reaction.
I wear glasses when I'm not wearing contact lenses. I'm likely to wear contacts for daytime travel but I will have taken them out by the evening or for a long-haul flight. So if my passport photo showed me wearing glasses and I wasn't currently wearing any during the border checks, I'd have the same problem. After some thought, I decided it would be simpler to remove my specs if necessary than have to hunt for a pair in my baggage to put them on. I also considered the unpleasant scenario of being killed during international travel and the challenge of identifying my body until someone found a pair of glasses to shove on my dead face.
My wife worried that if I fell dead or the No42 bus of fate got me while out running she would not know. So I did a wee online search and located a company which makes med alert bracelets and ID tags. I have an aluminium rubber bordered dog tag necklace which I don when running when I would otherwise not carry ID.
It has my full name and DoB, my wife’s phone #, my NHS # and my blood group. I have been tissue typed as a blood platelet donor, am a registered organ donor and have kept my organs in good nick. I’m 54 but have the heart of a 30 years old (max pulse: 220 - Age, mine is 190).
If you are worried about your body being IDed get yourself an ID tag. Though it might trip the scanner at the airport . . .
med alert bracelets
I wear one of these - largely so, when they scrape me up off the road, they know not to risk giving my medication-soaked bits to anyone..
(I do carry a body-donor card but, since they won't even take my blood due to the medication I've been on for 20 years, I suspect that any bits they might take[1] will purely get used for medical research..Which is fine - at least I'll be more useful in death than I was alive..)
[1] Maybe corneas will be OK.
"I also considered the unpleasant scenario of being killed during international travel and the challenge of identifying my body until someone found a pair of glasses to shove on my dead face."
That's why you should be wearing your 24 carat gold sticker on your head
"I also considered the unpleasant scenario of being killed during international travel and the challenge of identifying my body until someone found a pair of glasses to shove on my dead face."
Depending on circumstances glasses might be the least of their difficulties.
Not to be *that* person, but this is the wording in the piece:
" The wearing of glasses (or indeed hats, false moustaches or Ziggy Stardust makeup) in passport photos is forbidden and so the recognition systems struggle if you fail to remove them during checks."
So, as written, it's not correct.
But yes, of course, if you have your pic taken with or without glasses and then present yourself to the scanners in the opposite state, they will struggle.
(I've just realised I've rececent got myself very different frames to the specs I was wearing in my last passport photos, and now I'm kicking myself)
>>I renewed my passport 2 months ago and the guidelines explicitly stated no glasses
https://www.gov.uk/photos-for-passports
"Do not wear sunglasses or tinted glasses. You can wear other glasses if you need to, but your eyes must be visible without any glare or reflection."
Maybe you need a new eye test? ;-)
The "without any glare or reflection" bit is a problem if you wear glasses while having your photo taken, but they need to know the colour of your eyes for the biometrics system. Tinted contact lenses are probably on the "don't be a smart-alec" list too.
I unscrewed the sides of my metal-framed glasses and temporarily removed the lenses before taking the picture I used for my passport renewal application a couple of years ago. No glare, no rejection by the passport folks. Win.
The wearing of glasses in your passport photo is permitted. The wearing of glasses when standing in front of the retarded “eGate” *is* forbidden. Makes it pretty hard when you can’t see past the end of your nose sans specs - I’d the machine shows a message not only can I not read it, chances are I don’t even know it’s there :/
Been through far too many of those things this week. The ones on the continent seemed better. The UK one coming back was awful.
Have a friend who is registered blind - Can see a bit to read with thick glasses and had this issue in the automated gate - did the initial present passport bit to get in the gate, then as she stepped in to the booth the host shouted at her that she had to take her glasses off, and then proceeded to shout at her that she had to follow the instructions and look at the specific spot indicated, that she now can't read or see as she's not wearing her glasses...
Meanwhile, I've gone all the way through a booth keeping my own specs on (subtler frames) without any issues as the wonk was too busy shouting at my friend to notice me.
I've also had the experience somewhere of the instructions saying to remove glasses, but it said something like "read through and follow all of these instructions" and finished with "now look at the big bright spot and remove any glasses, when the light goes out you may put glasses back on and proceed through the exit" which all seemed eminently sensible!
and look at the specific spot indicated
I had this issue with a locum optician - he asked me to look at a specific letter on the chart while he was examining my bare eyeballs.
He was a bit put out when I asked which of the many graish smears on the white smear he was talking about. Then he looked at my records and went "oh".
After that he stuck to saying things like "look at the bright light" and "look top left". Which I can generally manage.
the machine shows a message not only can I not read it, chances are I don’t even know it’s there :/
Fortunately I have two solutions for this problem, having a Seeing-Eye Wife and not travelling abroad. The latter is mostly because of said SEW - she's really, really not a fan of travel.
Also because our previous pet sitters (my parents) have the bad taste to expire. I mean - don't they care about our lack of holidays?
And no, we're not about to try to put 7 cats and two dogs into catteries/doggeries. Not only are some of the cats impossible to catch (ex-feral farm cats that can seemingly sense when you are trying to catch them and have magical evaporative abilities) but trying to force all seven cats into the confines of a single cage would likely result in not having seven cats when we got back.. And, given that most places cost a fortune per pet, we'd be spending more on pet-boarding than on our holiday.
I know that as I had an ePassport reference lab, and the German ISO/IEC BSi wonk mentioned to me that they had my lab shut down, due to it "becoming too strong" wow.
Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD) or more accurately the devices defined under ISO JTC-1/SC 17 "Cards and personal identification" subset WG3 "Identification cards - Machine readable travel documents" are amazing, nevertheless. They work well, tho' limited a bit by the speed of data transfer from older ISO14443 protocols.
What always shocks me is that the actual RFID hardware, inlays, processors etc that fit onto the data page only have a two year warranty. So it's not uncommon to find that as you near the end of the decade of your individual ePass. that the flash which stores your JPG will have bit-rotted, or the 13MHz antenna might have micro-cracked - so unlike say Switzerland who moved to a 5-year replacement cycle - in UK, good luck on passing those eGates at the EOL of your ePass!
UK until recently didn't apparently even bother checking both keys (=~ OCSP status) of the digital sig of the inlay, and still my friends from overseas report inconsistencies on the UK gates, ICAO PKD connection always up?
It was a very interesting project to be a part of.
Wow would I be "happy" to pay 80€ every five years for a new passport. I think the fastest way through the checks is still to go to the machine, fail the test, and then go to the counter which does not handle the normal queues but only the express lane and the rejects from the automatic machine.
OTOH, the machine at ABZ let me in, even if it took long enough to verify the picture that I'm pretty sure that's farmed out to those companies that otherwise farm money in online games and solve captchas for spammers.
Umm no, not if you are a habitual glasses wearer
Just as well since my focal distance without glasses is about 5cm in front of the tip of my nose.. (if I have to read something when I don't have my glasses on I have to close my left eye since I have to hold it too close for stereoscopic vision to work).
Being partially-sighted sucks. Especially as you get older and presbyopia[1] kicks in..
[1] No - nothing to do with selective blindness by the POTUS..
Okay, maybe there is a point in requiring a passcode to call the lift, but what's the point of a passcode to actually use it ? That is not security, that is pure CIA-level paranoia. The building manager needs to remind himself that he is not managing the Pentagon. And that poor fellow (assuming he survived the ordeal) probably had a long, deep think about just how "secure" he is if he can die of a heart attack because next time the medics might not be able to get to him in time to save him.
I'm sure he was suitably impressed when he got the building tour at the start of his life there, but if I were told that, in order to get to and from my flat, I'd have to know more codes than what I need to move around in the banks I consult for, I'd smile, say thank you for the tour and never call back.
what's the point of a passcode to actually use it ?
It may be the passcode for using the lift only permitted access to your floor?
I've certainly stayed in a hotel where tapping the room card just took the lift to the relevant floor, right pain when there were 8 people all wanting different floors.
I've certainly stayed in a hotel where tapping the room card just took the lift to the relevant floor, right pain when there were 8 people all wanting different floors.
The implication being that you can't choose to get off on any floor other than your own.
What a ridiculous idea. What if you're in a group, have rooms on different floors but want to meet up for a nightcap?
Or in a residential block, what if you want to visit your neighbour on a different floor?
And what a lovely ambience - that genuine Super Max experience!
Had that in a hotel in Brisbane - tap card on reader and you can select reception, bar/restaurant and your floor only.
At one point I missed pressing the button for my floor and only realised as the lift went past and stopped two floors later for another passenger. Solution? get out the lift and walk down the stairs which had no restrictions on access!
Depending on time of year and time of day, there is a golden half hour where the sunlight floods through the windows and blinds the cameras of the automatic passport readers. Because the machines are blinded by the light and can't see your face, you then have to pass along to the manual check, when I know the sun is in the right position, I go through the line, skip the machines and go straight to manual check. Saves time.
Or just travel with children. Then you have the fun of using a passport with the picture of a 9 month old with a 3 year old. Madness. Fuck the fact ive lost 4 stone since my picture in my passport and the OH has a different hair cut and colour.
Worked in schiphol, narita, changi, dubai then got a fussy bugger in manchester. Smile politely and answer questions in normal volume in monotone. Id much rather use the auto scanners.
Back in the ‘90s we were on the train from Helsinki to St Petersburg. We get to the Russian border and there’s a problem. Despite putting them on the visa application form it seems the kids were not on the visa. My wife had them on her passport you see and it seems the Russians had NEVER seen a family passport before.
Our passports disappeared into the station building and the nice Finnish guard had to go and see about them (we were not allowed off the train). Bringing two border guards on with our passports. ‘Adin, da’ I said pointing to my passport. Then I pointed to my wife’s and said ‘tre’ then showed them the relevant part. This worked and we were off with visa stamps. Good job I had learned my Russian numbers.
I can still count to 20 in Turkish as well. A Turkish colleague made me recite them and I got the seal of approval for my pronunciation.
"To me, this is no different from refusing to recognise an infirm eldster unless they throw aside their stick and walk, oh yea to the lord. Nope, sorry, I don't recognise that quadruple amputee. Turf him out of his wheelchair so I can get a better look, would you?"
Isn't that the basis of the Dept of Work & Pensions 'fit to work' reviews?
In my youth I had a beard.
And whenever I went through an airport ( not too often in those days) passport checks were interminable. In Yugoslavia they made me stand in front of the desk while the officer took out a long, narrow and very thick book, with dog eared, worn pages, and he leafed through this checking me against every single one.
Don't remind me. I've been through quite a few passport photos. The sequence was something like this: Chubby schoolboy (aren't you a bit young to be flying by yourself?); Total stoner (step out of the line please); Carlos the Jackal (the bastard even had the same glasses) and Serbian warlord (not helped by the fact that the background was half red and half blue, looking like I was standing in front of a flag, all I needed was an AK47). Fortunately the latest one looks at least semi-human and I get through at the same rate as most dubious travellers these days.
I often get 'randomly-selected' for additional checks at airport security gates.
To be fair I did once forget there was a screwdriver in my carry-on work bag and they only discovered it about 5 minutes into my search. I was shocked and disappointed... that my favourite screw driver they put in the bin.
I used to fly out of and into Birmingham airport on a weekly basis some years ago.
This was before the standardised biometrics booths - the airport had its own. However, the room where you had to go to register to use it was never on any single time I was in the airport, open, so I never had the joy or otherwise, of using it.
I did learn very quickly though, not to hang around when I landed back in blighty - a flight from India landed just before my flight and I discovered that if I was quick out of the seat, grabbing my luggage and ran to security, I could just make it ahead of the tide of hundreds and, although many were going through the immigration section, many others weren't and ultimately they were so numerous, they inevitibably ended up causing about 90 minutes delay to get through security if you were caught behind them.
As for arriving at security at a run*, slighly out of breath... yeah it raised eyebrows on more than one occasion until I pointed to the mass of bodies coming down the escalators and stairs :-)
*ok more of a speedy stumble :)
same thing happens in SFO
Last time I was there (late 1990's) was after going on staff tickets with BA (our company, being set up by BA and some other airlines, entitled us to use BA staff standby tickets). THis was my first international flight and I made the newbie error of having some whiskies during the flight - which left me sober but with a raging migraine at the end of the flight.
The result of which was that I wanted to commit serious violence of the overly-loud persistent and annoying PA announcements. And my wife had to take over when trying to deal with the hire car desk as they seemed to want to upsell us everything that they could and I really didn't have the processing power to deal with it - I just wanted to get out and go to our friends house and lie in a dark room for a long time. It didn't help that I hadn't taken my migraine medication with me on the basis that it had opiods in it which would have got it seized by US customs..
Fortunately, we both survived and has a good time in San Francisco (hands-down my favourite US city) and, as a special bonus, got to see the 49ers beat New England at Candlestick Park. Slightly spoiled by the drunk yahoo sat behind us who, on discovering that we were British spent an hour trying to imitate our accents..
(Mine is a fairly neutral North London accent. My wife's accent is pure Janner (or was at that point - it's now Plymouth/Wiltshire. Something that more than one American seemed to have problems understanding..)
Oh, a while back I had coming through Heathrow down to a fine art (a project provided plenty arrivals to optimise the process), I think it was T2.
They had biometric gates, and when you got your timing right it was smart left at border checks towards the biometric gates, present biometric passport whilst in position and presto - my personal record was approx 30 seconds..
.. at which occasion I then spent 45 minutes waiting for my luggage to show up.
Sigh.
I renewed my UK passport a couple of years ago and had forgotten the no glasses rule.
I took my six quid photos to the passport checking service and was told "I'd take them again, without glasses, if I were you".
If i'd insisted, i'm sure I could have had those photos sent off but it seems a bit insane to invoke a helping service and then not take the advice it gives.
With hindsight I wonder if there was some profit sharing between the passport checking people and the phonebooth owning people.
I have, since those photos, grown a beard and my hair. I even died my hair and beard blue to go to Iceland. I have no trouble with my passport despite these changes, as long as I remember to take my glasses off, that seems to be a key problem.
Get fid if it. All of it.
Don't think about it or ever try to resurrect it.
Back when I were a lad the emergency services had standard keys or info for key holders, it always seemed to work well but now everything must be enshrined into a mystical chip that is only programmd so that None Shall Pass!
I regularly see women passport control officers when flying to central and eastern europe.
Last time I flew there was a passenger in a chicken costume. It was impressive to see the woman in passport control keep the same stony expression on her face while inspecting the travel documents for chicken man.
The wife's Malaysian, a country with a few quirks.. Passports only last 5 years (thankfully they can be had in a couple of hours... HOURS I TELL YOU, so long are you're around Kuala Lumpur) and doesn't regonise dual nationality.
Its also now more costly to move her PR status document than it is to aquire the passport.
This leads to the fun of having to carry at last count 4 passports (only 1 of which is valid) through passport control with questions over why every damn time (it's perfectly legal but very unusual).
More fun if she's flying with the kids and not me, since they have my surname and the wife doesn't.
That said, a Bruneian passport always, without fail results in seeing the inside of an interview room. This is even with the diplomatic passport a friend now has... Usually its so they can show the passport to all the rest of the guards since its a country with a lower passport holding population than a large village.
having to carry at last count 4 passports
Dad worked at a company that did business both with Israel and various Arab counties. So he (entirely unofficially but both obtained from the Passport Office after consultation) had two passports - one he used to visit Israel and the other he used to visit Arab counties (and also when he went to the Soviet Union).
The Arab counties (and the Soviet Union) were both in the habit of refusing vis entry to people with Eretz Israel stamps in their passport.
I had twin/duplicate uk passports up until a few years ago for the Israeli reason.
You just need a letter from work saying you travel to Israel on business.
It's a but redundant these days as Israel doesn't stamp your passport any more.
They just accesses your RFID chip and print out the extremely low-res biometric photo image onto a green slip with all your entry info and a barcode.
‘Automated facial recognition’?!?! You’ve fallen for the techno hype. The reality is spelled out here:
while a camera takes a picture of the traveller and an officer at a control station behind the gates checks that the image captured by the camera matches the one on the passport (facial recognition).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPassport_gates
So they have 1 person manning multiple gates, so the delay is that person checking the other photos before yours.
Hmm. The least they could have done is dressed it up like the Mechanical Turk.
Have you followed the citation provided? I don't want to call the claim either way, but I think there's definitely a logical leap being made from the source material.
The citation's linked report does state that Border Agents are expected to monitor the gates - but it also says they sometimes are run (in breach of their operating conditions) with no one monitoring. That implies to me that the meatsack is doing optional* secondary verification.
"Also, the picture on the packaging seems to suggest that you should affix it to the side of your head"
It also appears to have you grow an extra pair of arms as well as legs. I'm not sure if that's supposed to impart extra health, but I expect it to bugger your clothes budget and baffle your tailor.
Imp takes the new name "Buddy", as "Imp Y Celyn" literally means "bud of holly", and Lias starts calling himself "Cliff".
I preferred almost anyone else to Elvis back then, especially after I was married. Certainly Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, even Cliff.
Many years later when we started married life the next door neighbours were Elvis fans. The anniversary of his death was bad. It was a Victorian terrace with one brick thick party wall that didn't quite reach the roof.
"Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?", asks Dabbsy.
Because they don't work?
That could be the answer.
That could explain all the problems identified in the 80 or so preceding comments on this thread.
That might be why face recognition at the Notting Hill Festival always fails ...
... and in South Wales.
But then, how come face recognition works perfectly in China?
Or does it?
Is it a Chinese bluff?
Firstly I would like to say that I loved the old Iris system, it let me swan past some very long queues in under 30 seconds. However it was all too frequently blocked by people sorry eejits who had never registered to use it and expected it to magically work even though they never showed their passport to anything or anyone.
I wear glasses all the time, this doesn't stop HMPO from insisting I take them off for the photo even though I will never appear at a booth without wearing them. I ignored the instruction and it was ok with the guy who processed my application at the office. However, very frequently the e-gates decide not to recognise me. The assistants tell me to take them off which sometimes works. Once I decided to preempt the anti-glasses dogma and took them off in the first case - it still didn't work, so when the assistant looked away I put the glasses on and hey presto it let me through. After using the e-gates nearly every week ever since they were introduced (my carbon footprint is heinous) here is my advice:
1. Lean slightly forward so your face is closer to the camera.
2. Look straight at the camera lens not at your own picture.
3. Push your passport forward all the way to the stops and hold it down very very very firmly across the page.
My employment causes even 'large' UK passports to be filled in under a year, until I discovered a method to remove rubber stamp ink, and I used to mess around with my facial images.
I've 'flipped' images horizontally, moved my eye pupils closer and further apart, changed the colour of my eyes, had 'droopy' eyelids, changed my nose profile - even a broken nose, but the Passport Office accepted them all, except one droopy eyelid that covered the iris. The latter was replaced by the identical image with a black (square) dot so the 'iris' could be seen. Facial hair changes are readily accepted by the P.O., as are hair colours.
I object to the UK Government transferring my image to all and sundry. Their ersatz passport offices - in actuality VFS Global - have a chequered security history with local employees who, in some locations, are obviously agents for the host government. I always send my applications straight to the P.O.
But why worry? After they have processed images in to two for the data pages, your image is a total distortion of you!
Now with my ink removal chemical, my present 'large' passport, I have had 63 visas affixed and I still have many pages to use.
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