Taiwan immigration passes 2-million eGate travelers
Immigration authorities in Taiwan have marked the two millionth eGate user passing through its biometric border security system.
A 22-year-old woman named Yu was handed an iPad mini as a gift by National Immigration Agency Director-General Mo Tien-hu to mark the occasion after she passed through eGates at Taoyuan International Airport, reported Taiwanese media.
Launched in 2012, the eGates use facial image and fingerprint verification technologies to identify travelers leaving and entering the country at ports and airports.
Mo told the Central News Agency that there are total of 53 e-Gates located in Taoyuan International Airport, Songshan Airport in Taipei, Kaohsiung Airport, Taichung Airport, and that some 20,000 people are using them each day.
Last March, Taiwan’s e-Gate and border security system won the Information Service Industry Association of the Republic of China award for outstanding information technology application.
Upgrade mooted for seafarers ID documents
Stakeholders at an International Labour Organisation meeting have agreed that seafarers’ identity documents should be upgraded to a modern travel document such as an ePassport. Held in Geneva, the tripartite meeting of employers, seafarers’ unions and governments aimed to consider improvements to the Seafarers’ Identity Documents Convention due to implementation problems.
The latest SIDs standards were adopted in 2003, but the convention has failed to achieve widespread implementation. This is because: “the technical standards adopted have been superseded by the technologies and infrastructure now used for the issuance and verification of ePassports”, wrote the World Maritime News.
The meeting heard that the technical specifications for SIDs should be updated in order to bring them into line with those technologies currently used for ePassports
Juniper forecasts jump in biometric authentication market
More than 770m mobile apps that make use of biometric authentication will be downloaded annually by 2019, up from 6m this year, Juniper Research predicts. “Fingerprint authentication would account for the overwhelming majority of such apps in the medium term, driven by increasing deployment of fingerprint scanners within mid-range smartphones,” the researchers say.
ruhlamat and Burkle to partner as US forecasts smart card boom
Helfried Weinzerl, President of Burkle North America, and Berthold Klever, Head of Sales of Ruhlamat Germany, announce a distribution partnership effective January 15, 2015 for all of North America including Canada, the United States and Mexico. This agreement comes at an opportune time for North American card manufacturers as the plastic card industry transitions toward smart card technologies. Burkle North America maintains a strong presence in the plastic card industry introducing the SMARTcard Workcell a package consisting of a Collation System, Precision Counterbalanced Lamination system and productive card blanking system. Coupled with ruhlamat’s cavity milling, module implanting and Dual Interface solutions and ruhlamat’s antennae laying and inlay manufacturing system, the Burkle/Ruhlamat offering provides a powerful line of equipment for the strong growth forecasted for Smart Cards.