The worst part of each row holiday is undoubtedly the rumbling for passports: the fear that deposits like a strict border guard staring down you while you try to remember when you place them in the dashboard box, the door cubby or the kids' lunch box.
But that may be a thing of the past thanks to 'contactless corridors' – camera – driven biometric technology for which you don't have to flash or get out of the car. Instead, your face is your passport.
The Home Office has tested face recognition technology in maritime ports for passengers returning to Great Britain from elsewhere in an attempt to shorten the waiting times. It could be the norm next year.
At the moment, travelers have to hand over their passports to a Border Force Officer, who then scans one for a biometric reader, a time-consuming task, especially during the holidays when cars with families moan.
Instead, you provide your documents in advance and in theory through border control in Calais, Dunkirk or another British maritime border in seconds without having to wait until your documents are inspected.
The new technology can use cameras with super high resolution to photograph topics through their windscreens or have them look at a camera on the road to verify their identity against their travel documents.
The staff will still be present for 'Passengers of interest' – namely someone on Watlists, or marked if securing or providing information, as well as those whose identity does not correspond to the biometric data of their passport.
If it is successful, the technology can also be rolled out at airports – the dreaded biometric E -ports.
Cars in line are in the port of Calais. For those who come back to Great Britain, such lines may soon be a thing of the past
High resolution cameras can be used to scan the faces of drivers while finding their way to the incoming British border (file photo)
The then secretary -home Priti Patel announced the scheme in July 2022 – first proposed for use at airports. But since then it has moved to test the technology
Between November and February it called in four companies to identify a number of methods to identify travelers who use their biometric data without needing them to get out of their car or transfer documents.
Accurate details about how technology could work are currently under locking and key.
A source told The Telegraph: 'Under the new system you look at the camera instead of getting your passports.
'They have these really powerful cameras that can look through the windshield and take a picture of your face and match it on the face in the database.
'Assuming everything is right, then you get the green light and you drive through the edge. The other option is that you end your window and that you all look at an iPad. The goal is to use technology on maritime and rail routes, then on air routes. '
One of those companies, iProov, said the goal was to create a future in which border control was 'seamless, secured and automated' instead of being treated by people.
But Iproov CEO Andrew Bud told MailOnline that he was encouraged by the methods of his company to authenticate the identity of people.
“This is about convenience – when we have larger passenger volumes and security measures,” he said.
The specific goal for his company during the process was to determine whether cameras could capture images of the occupants of a car and verify their identity without human intervention – a 'really difficult' problem he is convinced that the company has solved.
Iproov's technology was based on that was used for Eurostar SmartCheck – a contactless corridor for passengers traveling to Europe from London St Pancras.
It rolled out the technology as an option for train travelers in July 2023, allowing them to verify their passport and their identity in advance with a selfie – so that they could walk through border control at the station without stopping.
The company said that his software could automatically verify the identity of a person in less than two seconds. It was completely optional, which means that people could adhere to old -fashioned border controls if they preferred.
“The people who used it loved it,” Mr Bud added. “They could walk straight and didn't even have to pause at the camera.
“Personally, I think this will transform the incoming passenger experience as much as SmartCheck for Eurostar.”
But although the long waiting time to return to Great Britain of the ferry to the past, privacy campaigners have given general concerns about the growing use of face recognition.
Mr Bud said that he did not understand the worries – since people have already provided facial data through their passport, against which the image is compared to accelerate the process of returning to Great Britain.
Under GDPR, Border Force can store data on British arrivals and departure for 'as long as it is necessary'.
“I have trouble understanding these worries, but it is important that we do not brush them under the carpet,” says Mr Bud.
'The preservation of civil freedoms is very important to us. This is face verification – if we talk about the border force that records the faces of people, they already have that.
'They have access to the faces of British citizens through the passport office and foreign citizens through matters such as electronic travel authorization.
“They don't get any information they don't have yet. They just ensure that the people who come in are the ones they expect. '
Iproov, one of the companies involved in the Home Office test, has previously created comparable 'contactless corridor' technology for Eurostar (depicted, technology at work)
In this system, users saw a selfie and scan their passport to verify their identity in advance (above). It is not known exactly how the home office system can work
The technology can also be rolled out at airports in the future – which can accelerate to Great Britain in every possible way
But Eurostar scraped that technology last month prior to the new Entry-Exit System (EES) in October.
Ees, which aims to eradicate illegal migration and improve border protection in the Schengen Travel Area, requires that British, US and other non-EU travelers offer their fingerprints the first time they enter the block.
It will replace the manual stamps of passports with digital images or fingerprint recording.
Eurostar, Eurotunnel and the port of Dover have each received £ 3.5 million to prepare for the EEs, which are expected to be launched in October, allowing passengers to perform the required checks before they travel.
This will be followed by the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) somewhere towards the end of 2026, where British travelers have to be authorized to enter the Landlands of Schengen.
But that means that the 'contactless corridors' can only be used practically on the way back to Great -Britain – which means that the journey will be less painful than that on the way to the outside.
How the contactless corridors of the home office will work at Maritime Borders is not yet clear – and is subject to the government who decides how she wants to continue on the basis of the tests that have been carried out in recent months.
A home office spokesperson said earlier: “We use a wide range of techniques and technology to protect our border security, but we do not comment on tests with specific equipment.”
