...move to a 10-fingerprint standard instead of two, in order to enhance security and identify visitors with even greater accuracy. The DHS believes the additional fingerprint scans will increase the level of accuracy from 96 percent to 100 percent and result in fewer people being sent for secondary inspection.
Ten fingerprint standard
More than 860 people with criminal or immigration violations have been intercepted at US borders on their biometrics alone. A third of the 11,000 hits against watch lists of known criminals, when visitors applied for visas in the last year, are attributable to biometrics, says the DHS.
Bob Mocny, deputy director of US VISIT says biometric technology will prove critical in boosting border security. “We’ve already eliminated visa fraud by the use of biometrics,” he says. "Now if the DHS has a record of someone who has attempted to enter the country illegally that person will be denied application for a biometric passport.”
Outside the US, the EU and Australia, among others, are testing and using biometrics in border control. European authorities are working towards a Common European Union Immigration Policy (EUIP) which consists of a central fingerprint database, connected to the separate database of each EU country.
Alternative international biometric standards are also being developed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) plans to standardise biometric technology for machine-readable travel documents but biometric data sharing arrangements between the United States and other countries would also be required.
Standards agency needed
Due to the various potentially competitive standards, biometrics experts have called for an international standards agency to monitor deployments of the technology to ensure that it is used as efficiently as possible across multiple countries.
The UK is one of the countries that will need workable standards to adhere to sooner rather than later. Authorities are already developing a biometric system to read the fingerprints of visitors which is expected to be in place by 2008, though the Passport agency has expressed concerns over the viability of other biometric methods, such as iris recognition. The government has also put in place an automated biometric immigration control scheme called IRIS, which is currently in operation at London Heathrow Terminals two and four. Five UK airports — Birmingham, Gatwick (both terminals), Heathrow (all terminals), Manchester (terminals one and two) and Stanstead will all eventually have the technology.
The UK e-borders system is another implementation of biometrics technology which will capture, review and store data about immigrant travel routes. In addition to giving arrival and departure information, carriers will be obliged to submit information about their passengers to the UK authorities before the traveller’s arrival. The system was implemented on a trial basis in December 2004 on a few selected routes and will run for 39 months. If it is deemed to be successful, the system will be replaced with a full implementation.
As more countries require the use of biometrics to cross their borders there is potential for different biometrics to be required for entering different countries or for the growth of multiple databases conflicting, isolated databases. Unless all countries agree on standard biometrics and standard document formats, a host of biometric scanners might be required at ports of entry across the Globe.
Tom Espiner contributed to this report
