DHS Wants a Single Search Engine to Flag Faces and Fingerprints Across Agencies

The Department of Homeland Security is moving to consolidate its face recognition and different biometric technologies into a azygous strategy susceptible of comparing faces, fingerprints, iris scans, and different identifiers collected crossed its enforcement agencies, according to records reviewed by WIRED.

The bureau is asking backstage biometric contractors however to physique a unified level that would fto employees hunt faces and fingerprints crossed ample authorities databases already filled with biometrics gathered successful antithetic contexts. The extremity is to link components including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Secret Service, and DHS headquarters, replacing a patchwork of tools that bash not stock information easily.

The strategy would enactment watchlisting, detention, oregon removal operations and comes arsenic DHS is pushing biometric surveillance acold beyond ports of entry and into the hands of intelligence units and masked agents operating hundreds of miles from the border.

The records amusement DHS is trying to bargain a azygous “matching engine” that tin instrumentality antithetic kinds of biometrics—faces, fingerprints, iris scans, and more—and tally them done the aforesaid backend, giving aggregate DHS agencies 1 shared system. In theory, that means the level would grip some individuality checks and investigative searches.

For look designation specifically, individuality verification means the strategy compares 1 photograph to a azygous stored grounds and returns a yes-or-no reply based connected similarity. For investigations, it searches a ample database and returns a ranked database of the closest-looking faces for a quality to reappraisal alternatively of independently making a call.

Both types of searches travel with existent method limits. In individuality checks, the systems are much sensitive, and truthful they are little apt to wrongly emblem an guiltless person. They will, however, neglect to place a lucifer erstwhile the photograph submitted is somewhat blurry, angled, oregon outdated. For investigative searches, the cutoff is considerably lower, and portion the strategy is much apt to see the close idiosyncratic determination successful the results, it besides produces galore much mendacious positives that necessitate quality review.

The documents marque wide that DHS wants power implicit however strict oregon permissive a lucifer should be—depending connected the context.

The section besides wants the strategy wired straight into its existing infrastructure. Contractors would beryllium expected to link the matcher to existent biometric sensors, enrollment systems, and information repositories truthful accusation collected successful 1 DHS constituent tin beryllium searched against records held by another.

It’s unclear however workable this is. Different DHS agencies person bought their biometric systems from antithetic companies implicit galore years. Each strategy turns a look oregon fingerprint into a drawstring of numbers, but galore are designed lone to enactment with the circumstantial bundle that created them.

In practice, this means a caller department-wide hunt instrumentality cannot simply “flip a switch” and marque everything compatible. DHS would apt person to person aged records into a communal format, rebuild them utilizing a caller algorithm, oregon make bundle bridges that construe betwixt systems. All of these approaches instrumentality clip and money, and each tin impact velocity and accuracy.

At the standard DHS is proposing—potentially billions of records—even tiny compatibility gaps tin spiral into ample problems.

The documents besides incorporate a placeholder indicating DHS wants to incorporated voiceprint analysis, but it contains nary elaborate plans for however they would beryllium collected, stored, oregon searched. The bureau antecedently utilized voiceprints successful its "Alternative to Detention" program, which allowed immigrants to stay successful their communities but required them to taxable to intensive monitoring, including GPS ankle trackers and regular check-ins that confirmed their individuality utilizing biometric voiceprints.