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I always got a kick out of those "e gates" the lines were always way longer and slower to move than going through the old fashioned boarder agent.

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As someone that came through London Heathrow this morning - most of the time it's because half of the gates are switched off, seemingly for no reason as far as I can tell. Combine that with the fact that US, EU and UK passports can all use these in the UK, I'm sure if i went to the "other countries" line I'd probably get through faster

In the UK the e-gates are not automated. Your picture goes a few meters to a staffed desk who operates I think 8 gates.

It's an efficiency measure not an automation and as such is subject to the usual staffing problems.

Interesting - I did try to find more information about how these work, since I apparently did not understand how they function - but everything I could find mentions "facial recognition algorithm" as the mechanism for determining a person-passport match.

Examples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPassport_gates

https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/international/news...

Ha - so akin to a Discworld camera! Pratchett would be laughing...

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