The Department of Homeland Security will deploy a biometric identification system for the U.S. Border Patrol that is designed to use iris and facial recognition to verify the identities of individuals who enter the U.S., Nextgov reported Tuesday.Aliya Sternstein writes that the service will use iris and facial images collected by Border Patrol and share or match them with images stored in DHS’ current IDENT system, as well as the FBI‘s own multibiometric system.
Ken Fritzsche, director of the identity technology division at the DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management, told the publication that the deployment is part of a limited production pilot as the department prepares to overhaul IDENT.
Sternstein reports that the future update to IDENT will target the capacity to support the processing of at least 10 million images as well as increased image quality to facilitate accurate facial matching.
“We’re trying to get enough knowledge right now on how to do iris [scans] to be able to actually process the images we’ve been collecting for a couple of years now,” Fritzsche added.
The report noted the potential use of iris templates to deceive the identification system.
