SAS develops technology for fingerprint security
SAS Airline is developing smart card technology to use a traveller’s fingerprint as an identity check.
The data for a traveller’s fingerprint will be held in a smartcard which can be read, without contact, by a card scanner. All the traveller would have to do is press a finger against a screen and his/her identity will be verified when the fingerprint is matched ‘locally’ with the fingerprint stored on the card.
Peter Söderlund, responsible for Product Development on Ground at SAS, said: “The challenge we face is to raise the level of safety, while making it easier to travel at the same time. Biometry can provide us this opportunity, which is why we want to test this technology.”
“Using this ‘local’ matching of the customer’s fingerprint and a smartcard, the process becomes simpler, safer and quicker for the traveller,” said Mr Söderlund. “We don’t think that our customers want to leave their fingerprints, so the information is not saved after matching is completed.”
Tommy Lundin, responsible for new technology at SAS, said: “A fingerprint stored in a smartcard means that travellers carry their own personal information and we can thereby resolve the problem of personal integrity.”
Initially, tests are to be conducted in an internal installation at SAS’s head office and then among a small group of customers at one of the major airports in Scandinavia.
2-May-2002 Digital ID security initiative launches
11-Apr-2002 Passport changes proposed for travel to the US
9-Apr-2002 EasyJet and Go demand photo ID for domestic flights
21-Jan-2002 Security in the air industry
18-Oct-2001 IATA: ‘We must rise to the security challenge’
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