These are gates where passengers with a biometric passport of certain nationalities simply have to place their passport on a scanner, let the machine take a picture of them, and proceed to the exit. A border guard is of course monitoring the process behind a computer screen and the machine checks for any criminal background through databases.
http://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2011/04/automated-border-control-facilitation-vs-security/
I’ve used one of these machines in Schiphol and they tend to be quicker than going through a border guard. But will this technology come to American airports? When you come to American airports the queue can be incredibly long and sometimes the border guards are rude. Wouldn’t it be better to just scan your American passport and go through?
For those who doubt the safety of the system, this is actually safer than a border guards in some EU airports because they don’t check their database(or at least it doesn’t look like they do!) but this system does.
What’s your opinion on this?