Facial recognition technology gives British passengers a faster secure route through the border 
The gates undertake checks against security watch-lists in the same way as the current manual control; they check the passports for evidence of tampering; and compare the person presenting themselves against the photograph recorded on the chip of their passport. In addition, a UK Border Force Officer will view the whole process on a monitoring station and will intervene if they have any suspicions. The supervising Border Officer will also stop a random proportion of passengers for an extra manual check.
The Manchester trial of the gates is being evaluated by a team of officials and biometrics experts. The UK Border Agency is satisfied that the barriers are safe, efficient and allow to direct resources to the risk and staff find the barrier systems easy to monitor and control. The new locations are still to be decided. The gates will be introduced at terminals which see the larger proportion of British and EEA nationals crossing the border in comparison to non EEA nationals. Through this targeted approach it will ensure the maximum effectiveness and benefits of the technology.
The use of high technology in British ports has already contributed to the seizing of over £260 million worth of illegal drugs, nearly 5,000 dangerous weapons and in excess of 800 million cigarettes. Fourteen mobile freight scanners are currently in service, operating out of key sites such as Dover, Southampton, Felixstowe, Coquelles and around 50 other sites in the UK.
The UK Border Agency also uses dog teams, carbon dioxide detectors, heartbeat monitors and other types of scanners to detect people, money and drugs. There will be two new scanners at Dover and Coquelles as well as upgrading and replacing scanners at Southampton and Felixstowe and other ports. This will not only increase capacity but replace older equipment.
This is part of e-Borders, enabling the UK Border Agency to check people (eg through advance passenger information from carriers) before they reach the UK. The Government is not interested in where people go for their holidays, but is determined to identify people who pose a threat to our security, stopping known criminals and turning back illegal immigrants. e-borders will also enable to count people in and out of the country. Passport readers and iris scanners allow to confirm the identity of people arriving in the UK, speed up travel for legitimate travellers and release officers to target high risk routes.
The new hi-tech National Border Targeting Centre for e-Borders will be based in Manchester, and by the end of 2010 staff there will monitor the vast majority of British and EU passengers and almost every foreign passenger travelling in and out of Britain. The new centre will create up to 250 jobs for the north west of England – joining the 25,000 staff working across the UK Border Agency across 135 countries.
To protect the law abiding majority e-borders have been designed to have the highest standards of data protection. Access to personal data is strictly controlled and is only used for law enforcement purposes. The database will be held at a secure location in the UK.
e-Borders will screen 60% of all passenger and crew movements in and out of the UK by the end of December 2009 against watch lists, rising to 95% by December 2010 and 100% by March 2014. Already the £1.2 billion e-Borders system has screened over 78m passengers travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,700 arrests, for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences.
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