Europe has delayed the introduction of its biometric-based traveler registration scheme, the Entry-Exit System (EES) but it continues working on tools that will help biometric identification at border crossings.
EU border agency Frontex presented its EES pre-enrollment mobile app this week, showcasing how non-EU travelers will be able to register their biometric and biographic data before arriving in Europe.
Frontex is calling the new app Quick Border. After checking their eligibility, travelers can scan their passport containing a chip and then take a live selfie, used to confirm that the person is the same as in the document. The last steps include a questionnaire which can be customized, according to the country’s specific requirements, explains Frontex’s Senior Research Officer Ricardo Neisse.
The app was presented during a conference on ID fraud organized by iMars, the European Commission-funded project dedicated to uncovering document fraud. Led by Idemia and a consortium of 24 partners, the project also focuses on the development of mobile tools for European border guards that verify the authenticity of identity documents and detect manipulated face images.
The EES will require non-EU citizens to submit fingerprint and face biometrics on their first crossing of Schengen borders. One thing that the Quick Border app will not be able to do, however, is scan travelers’ fingerprints. While companies such as iProov have been working on making remote fingerprinting a reality, it comes with its own challenges. For now, travelers will have to visit self-service kiosks or border guards to enroll their fingerprints.
“Some countries also foresee having border guards walking in the airport and enroll in the fingerprints as well,” says Neisse.
Sensitive operations such as certificate checks, presentation attack detection and verification are not performed on the device but on the backend of the app. The raw data is sent to the destination countries which can double-check any data.
Frontex has already conducted two tests of the app, including one in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport which tested the app’s usability. The second test was held at Stockholm Arlanda Airport as a fully fledged operational EES pilot which recruited almost 1700 people from 37 countries, mainly from the UK, U.S. and Australia. The pilot was completed at the end of August.
“This project was rather quick, a little over 10 months,” says Neisse. “We are still evaluating findings, and we are working on a couple of research publications so we are going to have a paper on this.”
Frontex is still working on improving chip reading and facial verification. Around 80 percent of facial images have passed the quality test while the remaining 20 percent mostly faced issues with lighting. The images are checked through eu-LISA, the European agency dedicated to large-scale IT systems, responsible for developing and managing the EES.
Some questions about the Quick Border app still remain, including whether it will be separate from the EU Digital Travel application which was recently announced by the European Commission. The platform allows both EU and non-EU citizens to create a digital passport.
“I think this is not yet decided. But the goal of the European Commission is to have one app for all,” says Neisse.
Performance key for biometric border tools
iMARS’ research does not just focus on tools that verify the authenticity of identity documents and detect counterfeits. The Horizon 2020 project is also exploring how biometric-based tools used by border authorities interact with European regulation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the AI Act as well as other privacy, data and border rules.
To shed light on this issue, iMars is developing guidelines and best practices with the help of independent advisors exploring the legal, ethical and societal part of biometric border tools.
Regulation is dependent on public opinion and iMars has found that the public has solid support for digital identity tools. In 2022, the project published an analysis of societal acceptability of checking and proving identity which covered 3,000 respondents across European countries.
“One thing was important to mention that the purpose and intended use of technology, technology, plus the personal data collection, should be clearly and carefully explained to citizens,” says Abdullah Elbi, a legal researcher at KU Leuven Center for IT & IP Law (CiTiP) in Belgium.
Another important part is the accuracy and performance of systems. Even slight false negative rates, even below 1 percent, might affect settings such as border control which see hundreds of thousands of individuals monthly or even weekly.
“Performance is very important, otherwise, the risk would be a violation of fundamental rights” says Elbi, who is also involved in iMars.
Accuracy issues are not only a problem for citizens. If tools cannot catch morphed images, then border control may let some bad people into the country, he adds.
On a positive note, more people are familiar with AI-fueled threats to identification such as deepfake thanks to the media attention to this topic in recent years.
“One of the lessons learned from this work was that the social acceptability and public perception also changed by time, with new technologies, with new laws, with some bad news,” says Elbi.
In April, iMars held a workshop where it presented the latest findings on face morphing. Morphing involves combining images of two individuals to create a hybrid image that resembles both original faces.
Aside from developing morphing attack detection (MAD) solutions for enrollment, forensic investigation and border crossing, the project is also focusing on vulnerabilities in biometric systems and training people involved with ID checks.
Article Topics
Entry/Exit System (EES) | Frontex | IDEMIA | iMARS | iProov | mobile app
