Biometrics Archives

Within the next 6 to 12 months, Homeland Security Department officials say they expect to have a long-awaited, instantaneous system for tracking foreigners who have overstayed their visits. Lawmakers have said such a tool is crucial for removing potential terrorists.

In 2002, DHS began to build a comprehensive entry and exit system for collecting biometric data from visitors traveling to the United States but nearly a decade later the exit part still doesn't exist.

Without an exit system, the department has encountered difficulty accurately identifying overstays, according to the Government Accountability Office. DHS estimates there were 36 overstays among the 400 people convicted through international terrorism-related investigations between September 2001 and March 2010. Five of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, were overstays.

Those statistics may change if all goes according to plans that DHS officials outlined at a House hearing this week.

The department is looping together a multitude of databases operated by three DHS components and the intelligence community to more quickly see red flags. Once integrated, the systems maintained by Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US-VISIT will be able automate previously manual searches and cross-check those findings with law enforcement and intelligence data. In essence, the integrated app will generate an e-dossier on leads, testified John D. Cohen, DHS principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism.

"Instead of us being reactive," by screening an accumulated list of potential overstays, "CBP and the technologists will be developing essentially a hot sheet," he told members of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security. It "will essentially create a dashboard available to ICE, on a day to day basis, that will provide them with insights about those public safety and national security risks that are either overstays or existing visa holders."

At first, the application will not be the biometric one envisioned by authorities after 9/11. It will include biographic information and certain fingerprints from travelers entering the United States, and, with advances in research, gradually grow into a robust biometric system. "You have the foundation for a biometric exit capability of the future," Cohen said.

Already, the department has taken steps toward this goal by vetting a backlog of 1.6 million overstays, Cohen said.

In May, DHS officials began by scratching off names of people who had since left the country or changed immigration status. Then, they screened in-house law enforcement and immigration records, as well as intelligence holdings from the National Counterterrorism Center, to winnow the remaining 757,000 people to 2,000 high-risk individuals. Of those, some had died or since become part of an ongoing investigation, leaving several hundred potential leads.

Two months later, all of the previously un-reviewed overstay records had been analyzed from a national security and public safety perspective, Cohen said. ICE currently is pursuing suspects, he added.

"I cannot for one tell you how much better I feel now," said Subcommittee Chairman Candice Miller, R-Mich.

Not so, said GAO.

"If we're going to focus on the national security and public safety folks, which is the thing to start with -- it gives the impression that once you're in the country, you're in. Unless you act out," Richard M. Stana, GAO director for homeland security and justice issues, said at the hearing.

Omar Abdel-Rahman -- an overstay -- had no criminal record before he was arrested for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, noted.

Because Transportation Security Administration officials didn't provide port authorities with test results on biometric card readers, the authorities bought the costly equipment without knowing whether it worked, according to the Government Accountability Office.

TSA currently is gauging the ability of various biometric card readers to scan so-called Transportation Worker Identification Credentials for controlling access to secure areas aboard vessels and at maritime facilities. Port authorities, truckers, longshoremen and other personnel were required to carry TWICs for ID purposes after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Due to poor planning, TSA didn't have time to rigorously test the access control technology before rolling it out at pilot ports in 2008 and 2009, according to federal auditors. TSA has since obtained the findings of the durability testing, but has not shared that information with port employees, GAO officials told lawmakers in an Oct. 22 letter released on Monday.

"According to representatives of four of the seven pilot participants we met with, not sharing the results of reader testing has limited their ability to acquire the equipment that meets the environmental and durability needs of their port facilities and vessels and has resulted in their expending important port security funds without any assurance that their investment will be fruitful," wrote Stephen L. Caldwell, GAO director of homeland security and justice issues.

The Homeland Security Department had made $23.6 million available for pilot participants through grants, according to a 2009 GAO report. Between 2002 and 2009, the government spent $111.5 million on the TWIC program.

The technology behind e-Passports, the relatively recent identity document upgrade to include biometrics and other personal information, may not be safe from terrorists, counterfeiters and other malicious attacks. In fact, data security has been a key concern about e-Passports for several years.

The Center for Public Integrity reports that the Government Printing Office, which oversees the production of e-Passports, has been warned by its inspector general that the Thai factory where the documents are produced is subject to threats from poor police protection and political instability. The IG found that GPO lacks plans and procedures to protect these technologies from outside threats.

Workers in Thailand put together the computer chips that go into blank e-Passports. The chips store all the information included on the passport's photo page, as well as a digital photo that can be scanned for facial recognition. The technology was first conceived following the Sept. 11 attacks and began to be rolled out in 2006, according to the article.

The State Department has cautioned that fraud is possible with e-Passports, as fake chips can be inserted in place of real ones. And security experts say that the technology isn't doing much to protect U.S. borders anyway. The center reports that weak manufacturing security and limited use of card readers in airports and other entry points limits e-Passports' utility.

GPO has said that they are doing everything possible to prevent security breaches, and none have been reported so far. The agency also plans to move e-Passport production to the United States this year.

Is your nose a snub? Or maybe a turn-up? According to British scientists, the nose could be the newest feature used to verify an individual's identity.

PhotoFace, developed at the University of the West of England Bristol and Imperial College London, uses a series of images, taken from different angles, to build a 3D model of an individual's facial features. The system then analyzes the relationship between three parts of the nose -- the ridge profile, the tip and the space between the eyes -- to determine identity.

But the program isn't exactly ready to catch dangerous criminals. Researchers found recognition rates to be relatively low and recommend that nose scans be used to supplement rather than replace other biometric measures. A University of Bath team is building a larger database of noses for comparison.

If snub and turn-up don't sound like you, fear not. PhotoFace also determined that noses come in Roman, Greek, Nubian and hawk varieties.