Officials say automatic screening more accurate than checks by humans
Owen Bowcott The Guardian, Friday April 25 2008 About this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday April 25 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 01:00 on April 25 2008.  
A face recognition system will scan faces and match them to biometric chips on passports. Photograph: Image Source/Getty
Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.
From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.
Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.
But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is ...   more »

by Rabbi Zvi Dov Kanotopsky
Moses at the splitting of the sea teaches us the essential qualities of a Jewish leader.
Passover, April 20, 1949 -- If we carefully examine the portion of the Torah that is read in the synagogue on the seventh day of the Passover festival, we will find that it represents, among many things, an almost exhaustive treatise on the manifold relationships between the ideal leader and his people. A careful study of the text itself reveals an analysis of almost all the possible situations that may arise in the normal life of a people to test the quality and to try the endurance of its leader. From the reactions of Moses, the leader of the Jewish People, and from his responses to these different situations and complex problems, we learn the qualities essential to the Jewish leader of any era, from the exodus of Egypt until this very day.
Our biblical text recounts three problems that challenged this great leader, problems that have occurred often throughout the history of our people and that foreshadowed almost all the biblical events that were to follow. First, we find a people surrounded by enemies, physically endangered, realizing that ...   more »

Dan Izenberg
Messianic Jews are entitled to Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return if their father is Jewish, according to a precedent-setting ruling handed down last week by the High Court of Justice.
Fifteen years ago, the court rejected a petition by Messianic Jews who demanded to be recognized as Jews so as to automatically receive Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return. In that landmark case, the court ruled that Messianic Jews had converted, and therefore were no longer Jewish.
Since then, the state has refused to grant all requests for citizenship according to the Law of Return by Messianic Jews.
Two years ago, however, a number of new immigrants to Israel belonging to the Messianic Jewish community petitioned the High Court after the Interior Ministry refused to grant them new immigrant status and citizenship according to the Law of Return.
These petitioners, represented by attorneys Yehuda Raveh and Calev Myers, argued that they were eligible for new immigrant status and citizenship because they were the offsprings of fathers who were Jewish, not because they themselves were Jewish according to the definition of "Who is a Jew" in the Law of Return.
According to Amendment 4A ...   more »