UPPER MARLBORO, Md.—Ongoing scenario testing of different processes and biometric modalities for verifying the identities of individuals entering and exiting through mock Customs inspection stations shows that some of the most critical factors in introducing biometrics into the departure process for foreign nationals at airports in the United States are the intuitiveness of, and clear instructions for, using the technology, as well as how to physically arrange biometric capture systems to enhance their effectiveness, an official with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology branch said at a media briefing.
“It’s the human interaction that’s quite frankly the biggest piece as we kind of see this stuff going forward,” said Arun Vemury, director of the Air Entry/Exit Reengineering (AEER) Apex program for S&T. “Biometric performance is well understood.” But if people “people can’t actually use the system, or it takes too long and now you’re delaying everything else,” then it “doesn’t matter” how good the biometric is, he said.
A year ago S&T established its Maryland Test Facility here near Washington, D.C., to test various biometric technologies, processes for moving travelers through Customs passenger inspection stations, and operating concepts for how and where to deploy biometric-enabled checks for foreign nationals entering and exiting the country. Biometric checks were implemented years ago for the arrivals process, but for the exit stage of an individual’s stay in the country the checks, outside of biographic submissions, have been non-existent.
At one time the cost of implementing the biometric technologies for departure checks was deemed too expensive, or too cumbersome in that a system couldn’t easily be deployed without disrupting flight schedules or challenging the existing infrastructure of airports. The costs of the technologies have declined over the years, but there are still challenges.
Some of the major takeaways that S&T has generated so far from scenario evaluations include those with “naïve subjects,” that is people that aren’t familiar with biometric technologies. In those cases, there is “poor biometric verification accuracy due to high failure to acquire” the biometric, according to a briefing slide presented by Vemury. One of the key elements of the evaluations is that the test population represents the general demographics of the traveling population, he said, so there is a wide range of persons involved in the testing.
In two test sequence evaluations so far, over 650 people have been used as mock travelers, Vemury said.
Another key takeaway from the testing relates to other human factors and that “instruction cues and process play an important role in biometric collection” and that instructions “must convey a clear understanding of needed action,” the briefing slide says.
Vemury said that in some countries where biometrics are being used to confirm the identities of individuals in airports officials have told DHS that there will be a prompt for travelers to look at a camera for face or iris recognition purposes and sometimes these people will turn and look at a CCTV camera mounted elsewhere that has nothing to do with capturing a biometric.
“We’re trying to understand if you give people specific cues, can they actually perform the tasks quickly and efficiently because if there is any ambiguity, it’s going to take longer and they’re going to be confused and now you’re messing up your entire throughput flow,” he said.
Other takeaways include not all biometric collection methods work for airports and that just because a technology costs a lot doesn’t mean it performs at a high level, the slide says. It also says that staff overseeing exit operations could be spread across multiple Customs stations and that the number of staff will “depend on the need for exception processing,” which refers to people that were unsuccessful in having their biometric captured or were unable to present a required biometric. The slide presentation says that these “exceptions are random but can cause delays.”
If a biometric isn’t successfully captured in two attempts, further attempts add significant time to the process and don’t meaningfully improve the biometric match accuracy, the briefing slide says.
The evaluations have also found that the way the technology is set up can drive the accuracy of biometric matches. In one configuration, changing the way the biometrics were arranged showed a change from 97 percent matching accuracy to 28 percent, according to the briefing.
Early next year S&T plans to begin the final phase of testing in its AEER project, which will be a technology demonstration at an airport to see if the technology and processes work. This will demonstrate how well the technology and processes work “to inform a new concept of operations and requirements for DHS acquire to,” Vemury said.
One challenge with implementing a biometric exit process is making sure that when a person successfully submits his or her biometric, that the individual then isn’t able to turn around and exit the airport. That means placement of any biometric check is important.
Last month John Wagner, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Field Operations at Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told a Senate panel the best place to put a biometric exit check is in the jet way, which is essentially a causeway between the airport gate and the airplane. This provides the most assurance that the foreign nationals that submit their biometric have boarded the plane, he said.
Vemury said that in all the processes S&T is evaluating in the AEER program there is positive flow control of travelers built into the concept of operations to provide confidence that a person has boarded the plane.
For the AEER program S&T is working with CBP, which is also doing separate tests of biometrics for the entry and exit processes at airports and also a land port of entry. For the AEER effort, S&T is focused on fingerprints, facial and iris recognition as potential biometric modalities. Fingerprints are currently used to verify the identities of foreign nationals arriving to the United States.
Whatever technologies and processes are ultimately acquired, Vemury said that it is unlikely to be a one-size fits all approach for every airport.