Buying Into Biometrics

"Biometric revenues are expected to grow from $399 million in 2000 to $1.9 billion in 2005," the research, consulting and integration firm predicted. "Much of the growth will be attributable to PC/network access and e-commerce, although large-scale public-sector deployments will continue to be an essential part of the industry."

Six days later, the assumptions underlying their research changed dramatically.

Congress has enacted a series of increasingly focused homeland-security initiatives that include biometric components. The USA Patriot Act, passed last October, addressed border security, surveillance powers for law enforcement and biometrics. The Aviation Security Act, also passed in October, mandates fingerprint biometrics as part of background checks for all airport employees. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act, passed in April 2002, includes appropriation requests totaling $3.2 billion during the next three years for database integration, biometric enablement of passports and other travel documents, and installation of biometric readers at every U.S. entry point.

Just a year ago, Congress denied the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) funding for equipment to read the five million finger-scan-enabled border-crossing cards the agency has issued to Mexican citizens since 1998. Times have certainly changed.

"Since 9/11, we've seen a watershed change in the way people talk about biometrics," says Dennis Carlton, director of Washington, D.C., operations for IBG. "Formerly, it was just an 'interesting technology.' Now it's a given as a form of enhancing security."

Biometric security may be a given, but that's like saying the government needs transportation. Should it be a sedan, a truck, a bus or a jet? The choices in biometric technology are equally application-dependent.

Leading Biometric Technologies

Most biometric systems work essentially the same way. They capture a digital image of a body part and attempt to extract "permanent" distinguishing characteristics from it. Those characteristics are stored in a binary template. Future biometric samples are compared with the template to obtain a match or rejection. It sounds straightforward, but biometric security is fraught with real-world challenges.

Fingerprint-scanning is the leading biometric, with a 48.8 percent share of the market, according to IBG. Face-scanning, a relative newcomer, has captured the No. 2 spot with 15.4 percent market share. Those results aren't surprising, because faces and fingerprints have been the linchpins of personal identification for decades.

"The FBI has used automated fingerprint-identification systems since the 1960s," notes Bill Spence, marketing director for Recognition Systems Inc. (RSI), a division of Ingersoll-Rand. More than 18,000 local law-enforcement agencies run fingerprints through the FBI's extensive databases. Banks require non-customers to leave a fingerprint on checks they wish to cash.

All U.S. driver licenses will incorporate biometric security if a House bill introduced May 1 becomes law. The Driver's License Modernization Act, co-sponsored by Reps. James Moran (D-Va.) and Tom Davis (R-Va.) gives states five years to issue smart-card driver licenses that incorporate multiple biometric identifiers. The bill also requires states to maintain interconnected databases of license-holder information. The bill authorizes $315 million for implementation of standards and linking software.

While the bill does not specify a biometric that states must use, a fingerprint scan is the most likely choice. Five states,California, Georgia, Hawaii, Oklahoma and Texas,currently require fingerprints on driver licenses.

Face-scanning would seem to be the obvious second choice for driver licenses. Illinois has employed Viisage Technology's FaceExplorer system since 1999, compiling a database of more than four million faces. In January 2002, West Virginia began testing a face-scanning system developed by Visionics and installed by Digimarc ID Systems (formerly Polaroid ID Systems). First-time driver license applicants' faces will be scanned and compared with two million faces in the state's database to check for duplicate applications and reduce identity fraud.

But face-scanning is vehemently opposed by privacy advocates, partly because it can be performed at a distance without the subject's knowledge or consent. The accuracy of face recognition in public-surveillance applications was also attacked by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in January 2002. The ACLU investigated a system used by Tampa, Fla., police, based upon Visionics FaceIt technology.

"The [operators' logs obtained by the ACLU indicate the system made many false matches between people photographed by police video cameras...and photographs in the department's database of criminals, sex offenders and runaways," according to the ACLU's report. "The system made what were to human observers obvious errors, such as matching male and female subjects and subjects with significant differences in age or weight."

Bad camera angles, uncertain lighting, moving subjects and other variables adversely affect face-scanning's usefulness in public surveillance. Face-scanning fares much better under controlled conditions such as a driver license photo session or an airport security checkpoint. Several airports are testing face recognition, including Logan Airport in Boston, T.F. Green Airport in Providence, R.I., Fresno Airport in California and Palm Beach International Airport in Florida.

Hand-Scanning

Hand-scanning, or hand geometry, is a long-established biometric, which dominates the access-control and time-and-attendance markets, and accounts for 10.4 percent of the biometrics market. It measures relatively large characteristics, such as the length of fingers, distances between joints and knuckle shapes, so it is less sensitive to dirt and minor scars than fingerprints.

"The Department of Energy has used hand-readers for many years," says Spence of RSI, which leads the hand-geometry market with more than 25,000 customers.

"National labs such as Sandia and Livermore use it. Ninety-seven percent of nuclear power plants use it. The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Reserve use hand-readers to control access to their offices," he says.

The INS' Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPass) is one of RSI's public-sector success stories. International frequent flyers breeze through immigration inspections in as little as 11 seconds by submitting to hand-scans at self-service kiosks. Since 1995, INSPass has processed more than 300,000 passengers. INSPass currently operates at international airports in Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York (JFK), San Francisco, Washington-Dulles and the U.S. preclearance sites at Vancouver and Toronto in Canada.

New interest in hand geometry is coming from many government sources, Spence adds, noting that, "Pipelines, water treatment plants and all infrastructures are now being considered [for hand-scanning security."

Iris-scanning accounts for 6.2 percent of the biometrics market. The patterns in the eye's iris are as unique as fingerprints. Iridian Technologies holds the patent on iris-scanning technology.

"We're being pulled into public-access applications,typically airports, but also border gateways," says Bill Voltmer, Iridian's CEO. "At the state level, most of our applications have been in prisons to control booking, releasing and moving prisoners. Lancaster County [Pa. has used IrisScan for years. Cost control is one benefit; it takes less staff to manage prisoners," he says. "But the main concern is preventing the release of the wrong inmate. Forty percent of prison escapes are attributable to the wrong person being released."

The Reseller's Role

Big government prefers to do business with big contractors. The leading biometrics prime contractors include IBM, EDS, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon/Tyco, SAIC and Unisys.

"Unisys developed Florida's face-scan driver's license program, based on Viisage's technology," says Ed Schaffner, director of positive identification and access-control solutions. "We also developed the world's largest smart-card deployment,Malaysia's government multiservices card,which incorporates banking, medical and government services on a single card. Fingerprint biometrics provide positive identification,"

he explains.

Unisys is hedging its bets, partnering with multiple vendors in fingerprint, face, iris and other biometric sectors. The company also partners with smaller integrators for local implementation services, Schaffner says.

"From a VAR's perspective, biometrics presents significant integration challenges," IBG's Carlton says. In many applications, biometric templates must be compared with existing databases of mug shots, fingerprints, etc. Integrating legacy systems with new biometric inputs often requires a layer of custom middleware. Indeed, middleware already accounts for 11 percent of the biometrics market, and that share is expected to grow.