Ministry unveils plan for facial recognition to speed up airport entry/exit process

The Justice Ministry announced Tuesday a plan to introduce a new type of unmanned gate at major airports to fast-track Japanese passengers while allowing more officials to screen foreign nationals as a measure to counter terrorism and block illegal entry. "By smoothing out the immigration entry and exit processes for Japanese people, we can have more immigration officials run investigations on foreign nationals," said a news release distributed by the ministry on Tuesday. With 40 million travelers from overseas expected to come into Japan in 2020, and 60 million expected in 2030, it's easy to predict that airports will be short on immigration staff, a Justice Ministry official said. The new gates will feature cameras that take photographs of passengers. By using facial recognition technology, they will match the photo with image data retrieved from passports.