(c) 1995 Copyright Nando.net
(c) 1995 Reuter Information Service
OSAKA, Japan (Dec 1, 1995 - 08:20 EST) - For travellers who suffer
spasms at the sight of snaking immigration queues, the world's travel
agents have come up with what they hope will be a lasting solution --
digital passports.
The size of credit cards, the new passports store a holographic image
of your hand along a magnetic strip, and should help you clear
immigration in a fraction of the time it usually takes, travel agents
said on Friday.
"Digitalising the image of a hand onto a travel document or smart card
(will) provide...clearance in a matter of seconds," said Geoffrey
Lipman, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), a
travel industry body.
By sliding cards into scanners similar to bank cash dispensers,
travellers would skip the lengthy immigration queues that plague most
international airports, ports and road crossings, and do away with the
need for officials to check visas and photographs manually.
"Experiments with this kind of approach with 50,000 travellers in the
U.S. have been highly successful and ... international experiments are
in preparation in Canada, Germany, Netherlands and the U.K. using
common card and machine standards," Lipman told the 10th Japan
Congress of International Travel in Osaka, western Japan.
Lipman said the introduction of digital passports, which may also
store eye and voice scans, could also help halt international
terrorism by making it virtually impossible to forge travel documents.
"It's just like DNA fingerprinting," said Una McGrath, a
representative of the Irish Tourist Board.
"It's a much safer way than photographs because fingerprints are
unique to individuals," she said. Voice patterns and eye layout are
also unique to individuals.
Lipman said that Japanese holiday-makers and business people who
travel regularly to Hawaii could begin using digital immigration
procedures, dubbed FAST (Future Automated Screening for Travellers),
in as little as three months, when the holiday mecca hopes to start
its own FAST trial.
But he gave no indication of how long it could take for FAST to
supercede the visa-smeared -- and often treasured -- paper passports
now in use.
Some of the 1,700 delegates at this four-day tourism conference which
ends on Sunday said it might never happen.
But Lydia Ko, a delegate from Hong Kong, said it could take as little
as five years.
"I honestly think that five years from now we might all be using
them," Ko said.