How to fix Europe’s border troubles? eu-Lisa holds industry roundtable

European borders are facing increasing pressures: The upcoming introduction of the EU’s Entry-Exit System will bring new  operational challenges as countries rush to introduce new biometric-based border technologies. At the same, the bloc is introducing regulatory changes, including the AI Act, privacy laws and digital wallets. All of this is happening amid an increase in global travelers as well as a rise in AI-fueled identity fraud such as deepfakes.

At the center of these issues is eu-LISA, the agency in charge of large IT systems. The organization held an industry roundtable last week to hear about new solutions – including biometric ones. Aside from government agencies, the event hosted companies such as iProov, SAS and Palo Alto Networks, law enforcement agencies such as Europol and the Norway National Police as well as other experts.

For some companies, the answer to border complexities is allowing travelers to pre-enroll for border checks. iProov has been working with the European border agency Frontex on a mobile app in preparation for the Entry-Exit System by providing the facial biometric check.

“What we are seeing now is the solution for both the regulatory and operational parks is remote, moving more and more of this kind of operations remotely,” says iProov’s Head of Identity Jonas Ingelstrom.

The UK firm has made a similar product for the international rail line Eurostar which connects the UK with Europe. The app enabled passengers to pre-onboard with their smartphones by scanning their faces with a camera and their documents with NFC technology. The innovation allowed passengers to simplify border crossing at the train station, while their data was checked and sent to the UK Home Office.

IProov’s job at European borders will be a lot more complex. Aside from face biometrics, the EES will require non-EU citizens to submit fingerprints on their first crossing of Schengen borders. While supervised manual fingerprinting is resource- and time-intensive, remote fingerprinting brings its own set of challenges, explains Ingelstrom.

The first is that remote fingerprint captures are subject to severe Al-powered fraud. Another is a regulatory challenge: Reading biometric fingerprint data in passports is protected by Extended Access Control (EAC) and can only be read by authorities of EU member states.

“How can you turn these phones that you use for remote enrollment to read fingerprints? That is the challenge,” says Ingelstrom. “Terminal access, or Extended Access Control, is only provided to certain hardware and we cannot give that to billions of phones, that would be very unwise.”

Other participants at the industry round table shared their own struggles with biometric border-control technologies.

Frøy Løvåsdal presented the Norway National Police Directorate’s work on building e-learning on manual face comparison for border ID controllers.

The manual face checks ensure that there is a “human in the loop” during biometric border checks, a practice that is being introduced to ensure the technology is used responsibly. For this, the Norwegian police took inspiration from across the Atlantic, from a set of recommendations on facial recognition published by the National Academies and produced by different U.S. agencies.

“They’re pushing a human in the loop, and not just any human, but a human with competence,” says Løvåsdal. “They want to have requirements for training and certification levels.”

The senior advisor for the National Police Directorate admits that face comparisons are actually really difficult. The course covers different aspects of face comparison, including morphological analysis, face anatomy, bias and image quality.

Facial matching alone, however, may not be enough to ensure smooth travel experiences, she adds. To avoid long lines in the airports, European authorities may need to revisit discussions on iris biometrics, says Løvåsdal.

“I think if we had automated face, finger and iris, less cases would end up with needing human adjudication,” she says.

Representing the view from airports and seaports was the German company Mühlbauer Group which presented its Smart Seamless Travel Corridor which relies on biometrics to check passenger identity. In the future, travel could be streamlined by replacing traditional physical documents like passports and ID cards with digital travel credentials stored securely on smartphones, according to the company’s Sales Manager Thomas Schirferneder.

“We see a tendency similar, like in cash, that all physical documents get more and more digital,” says Schirferneder.

The event “EU Justice and Home Affairs in the Age of AI: Fostering Innovations and Mitigating Risks” took place on 12-13 November in Budapest, Hungary. eu-Lisa currently operates three large-scale IT systems, Eurodac, SIS, VIS and is working on the development of EES and ETIAS.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  border security  |  Entry/Exit System (EES)  |  EU  |  eu-LISA  |  face biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  iProov  |  mobile app  |  Mühlbauer