Gemalto to Trial Biometric Boarding with CBP at LAX

Gemalto is going to work with the US Customs and Border Protection agency on a biometric boarding system at Los Angeles International Airport, the company has announced.

LAX has been the site of considerable biometric experimentation over the past year. British Airways and Lufthansa both participated in biometric passenger screening trials with the CBP earlier in the year, using technology provided by Portugal-based Vision-Box. As in those cases, Gemalto’s trial will revolve around the use of facial recognition, which will effectively replace participants’ border passes with biometrics.

In a statement announcing the trial program, Gemalto highlighted the effectiveness of its facial recognition technology, asserting that in the Department of Homeland Security’s Biometric Rally testing, its “Live Face Identification System (LFIS) achieved a 99.44% successful acquisition rate in less five seconds, comparing very favorably to the average of only 65% over the same period amongst the other vendors present.”

Gemalto did not offer details about when the trial would launch or how long it would last. In any case, the company is getting involved in a much larger government project, with the CBP having dramatically extended a biometric border screening across multiple airports over the last several months, and working with various partners to expand it into adjacent areas such as boarding.

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December 6, 2018 – by Alex Perala