Portugal's Lisbon Airport has opened up its automated border control system to a number of countries outside the European Union.Previously only open to EU and Portuguese citizens, from this week it will be open to citizens from the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and New Zealand.Since 2007 Portugal has used the automatic border control system for entry of European over-18s who are holders of an electronic passport or national ID card.”Rapid” was developed by the Portuguese company Vision-Box for the Portuguese Borders and Passport Control Service.In 2013, Vision-Box equipped the new arrivals and departures terminal at Lisbon's International airport with the latest version of its ABC eGate, vb i-match® 5.RAPID uses electronic passports as the biometric data storage medium and facial recognition is the base for biometric matching.A facial image of the traveller obtained at the border is compared with the one stored on the chip.The system started as a pilot project with ten booths at Faro airport in May-June 2007 and after an evaluation conducted by the University of Algarve, it became operational.
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