Traveling internationally soon? There’s a new app that you can use at Atlanta airport customs

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — New technology rolled out at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport could improve your travel experience. If you’re going overseas for the holidays, the changes should help speed up getting back into the country after international travel.

It’s as simple as downloading an app that just launched in the last couple of months. Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach spoke with U.S. Customs and Border Protection about what passengers need to know.

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It’s called Mobile Passport Control and it lets travelers upload all their information before their trip.

Then, when you land or return after a cruise into any port in Florida, you just take a selfie and hit submit.

“It’s a profile you create it, take a picture of yourself and it has your documents and once you arrive via cruise or air and arrive and have Wi-Fi...You submit it, the profile is received by CBP and it’s processed,” said Officer Carlo Cortina, the assistant port director at Hartsfield-Jackson.

Cortina says you can’t skip the lines altogether, but using the MPC gets you through processing much quicker.

“There’s going to be a designated lane for those mobile passport control users, which is going to be vastly smaller than the other ques,” Cortina said.

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MPC is free and works similarly to Global Entry which costs a fee to become a trusted traveler for international flights. It uses facial comparison technology, not facial recognition, using a large database.

CBP says your privacy is protected and all advance information is secure, only used to verify your identity that day.

“It’s comparing you to your last five to 10 images we have of you. So it’s under three-second processing time because it’s comparing me to me,” Cortina explained.

The new app and technology not only speeds things up for passengers but takes some of the administrative burden away from CBP officers.

Officials say it’s more efficient, gives officers more time to look for travelers that may be a potential threat and frees them up to work on finding things like drugs, currency or commodities they don’t want entering the country.

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