Errr... for GE? The US GE machines don't do a biometric match on the photo. Taking your glasses off makes zero difference. Nor do they read the RFID chip. Yet. It's purely OCR and fingerprint matching at this point.

That's good to know..
 

The CBP officer told me when I enrolled that they would be installing photo biometric kiosks... I guess that's in the planning phase.

It is a great program, I've used it about 20 times so far.

Steve

I expect they will in the future. Many countries use it all already. The US, however, decided that rather than install the best & most secure tech (& tell everyone without an updated passport they just can't use the system until they update their passports) they installed deliberately crippled tech so that older passports can access the machines. Typical. :rolleyes:

I got my GE through NEXUS, and I know NEXUS has been doing IRIS scans for years. I've never bothered getting my Iris scanned since I can just use GE and not worry about this, but if you did a lot of flying to Canada that might be worth it.

Can you be more specific? If I did not use the @ symbol, it's to avoid spam bots from harvesting the actual email address. PM me if you have any questions.

GenevaFlyer

Another nice GE experience today. Actual kiosk usage didn't save any time since we were the first off the plane, the lines were short and we ended up waiting forever for our bags. HOWEVER, by that time the exit line from the baggage area at SFO was a mile long, branching in two directions from two different carousels. Sent my wife on a little expedition and she found the GE exit. Saved a ton of time!

Avoid the "bad kiosks!"
 

Be aware that at DFW, apparently not all GE kiosks are created equal. On my entry a couple of weeks ago, I went up to use a random GE kiosk that seemed to be functional and normal, but it would not scan my passport after several tries. I looked around, and a passenger service representative came over to me and said, "oh, don't use one of the bad kiosks, you need to use one of the good ones." She pointed out a nearby kiosk that looked identical, but when I scanned my passport, it worked on the first try!

Clearly, the rep knew from watching thousands of GE members that some kiosks simply do not scan the passports. And yet, they all appear to be the same (they all have the same screens showing that they are in service). Perhaps the scanning mechanisms are dirty/broken on some of the kiosks?

It is not the first time that a kiosk has refused to scan my passport, but when I try a different machine, it works (at various airports in the system). Has anybody experienced the same?

Yes. I had trouble with bad kiosks in a lot of places, most notably in Dublin the last time. The GE officer there said that sometimes the machines have difficulty reading the RFID in the passport because the sensor gets dislodged. He said the trick is to push the passport all the way in, then slowly pull it back until it reads. He did it for Mrs. FlyMe's passport and it worked on the first try. I tried it on my own and failed.

I didn't think the GE kiosk did anything with the RFID. Its essentially a flatbed scanner that reads the line at the bottom of the page.....

Maybe. I could be mistaken, but I did hear the words RFID come out somewhere. In any case, he said you had to jiggle it by sliding it out slowly. I couldn't get it to work, but he said it was a common problem with the GE kiosks.

My passport wouldn't scan the other day at LAX so I just pushed the button that said something like "trouble reading passport" and then it asked me to enter my country of citizenship and passport number manually. Once I did that everything else was the same, picture, fingerprints, questions, print receipt. Wasn't a big deal that my passport wouldn't scan.

Can a Global Entry card function like a passport card when crossing a land border?

No.

sometimes there is an advantage when the machine does not work. My D is waiting on hers. Last flight into LAX told by officer to take her to machine and "fail" by smearing fingerprints. Then can go to front of line for normal entry with D

Mumsnet all of a sudden?