The Department of Homeland Security has released a study assessing the impact that its newly-created biometrics research system may have on the privacy of individuals.
Released Tuesday, the assessment says that the Cloud-based Biometric Analytic Environment system was established to support the work being done by the Biometrics and Identity Technology Center within the DHS Science and Technology Directorate to enhance the performance of the various biometric tools being used by the agency to carry out its mission.
The system will be housed within a designated Amazon Web Services S&T GovCloud partition, where it will be employed to test tools like facial, iris and fingerprint recognition.
The risk to privacy stems from the use of real-world biometric data during testing. The DHS opted to use data collected during actual operations due to the limitations and potential problems that synthetic data may introduce.
According to the assessment, the DHS has taken multiple steps to mitigate the risks to privacy. These measures include the de-identification of biometric data up to the point where only the information needed for accurate research and analysis is retained. Encryption and other methods will also be employed to ensure that the data is transferred securely from contributing agency components.
Access to the system, its data sets and associated applications will also be limited to S&T federal personnel and select contractors.