Report Suggests Use of Facial and Fingerprint Scanning on Foreigners

Reprinted from The New York Times, February 12,2003

By JENNIFER S. LEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — Government scientists are recommending a combination of facial recognition and fingerprint scanning technologies as the federal standard for identity documents to be issued to foreigners starting next year.

The standards, which were Congressionally mandated as part of the U.S.A. Patriot Act and a border security act, would be used in all documents issued to foreigners by the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, including green cards, student visas and border crossing cards.

The scientists’ report, which has been submitted to Congress, is the first step in instituting body-recognition technology, known as biometrics, as a governmental tool on a wide basis.

Biometrics has been identified as a necessary means of improving the tracking of foreigners and the reduction of document fraud. Pending the results of the study, the immigration service will install biometric technologies, like fingerprint scanners and facial recognition software, at all 300 border entry points within the next few years.

The technologies will be used to deny entry to foreign nationals who have a criminal record or who appear on government watch lists.

Last week, the immigration service completed a pilot program that used fingerprint recognition and digital photography at six ports of entry in the United States. The machines in the pilot program are able to scan the 15 million Mexican border crossing cards and green cards that have already been issued by the State Department and the immigration service.

The new technologies will also play a substantial law enforcement role, since the federal formats could be made compatible with law enforcement standards for fingerprint and mug shots, the report found.

The study, conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, is the most extensive examination of biometric testing to date. It used databases of 120,000 facial photographs and 600,000 fingerprints collected by the State Department, the immigration service and law enforcement agencies. As databases grow, the ability to make accurate matches often declines.

The scientists said they had been impressed with the results. “Facial recognition is extremely good, much better than we expected for verification,” said Dr. Martin Herman, chief of the information access division at the institute.

Commercial facial recognition technology had about a 90 percent accuracy rate of “one to one” verification — that is, confirming that the person being scanned is the same one who was issued the document. It had a 1 percent false positive rate. But the study found that when the photographs were of lower quality — taken outdoors, for example, — the technology’s accuracy rate could fall to as little as 47 percent.

Facial recognition is not as good as fingerprint recognition in “one to many” searches — that is, trying to match a single face against a huge database of faces. In experiments with 10,000 faces, the first identification was a match only about 77 percent of the time.

While its accuracy rate was above 90 percent, fingerprint recognition had its problems as well, especially with individuals whose fingertips had worn down, like farm workers, housecleaners and the elderly.

Even combining both technologies will not absolutely secure the nation’s borders, Dr. Herman said.

“Biometrics is just part of the solution, it’s not the full solution,” he said. “You still need the whole infrastructure of people who are trained.”