UAE government adopting facial and iris recognition to identify customers

UAE government departments plan to adopt new biometric verification processes including facial recognition and iris recognition within two years, according to a report in Arabian Business.

Currently, residents have to show their Emirates ID at majority of the government departments to complete any transaction. “Iris scans and facial recognition are very important add-ons to our system,” saidf Shukri Al Braiki, director, Emirates Identity Authority.

“You use biometrics to ensure that you avoid duplicating a record, which means issuing more than one ID number to the same person. We avoid that through fingerprints but when you depend on one factor in biometrics, there is always room for error. So the accuracy is 99.5 to 99.8 percent but that could increase to 99.95 per cent if you have several biometric technologies.”

Iris and fingerprint recognition systems are already used by travelers at UAE airports.

The Emirates ID authority is also contributing to a federal one-stop shop online to be launched by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority with some of its services to be available early 2017.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  iris recognition  |  UAE