Biometrics proves 1 percent of applicants to enter U.S. are unsuitable

the country safer as a result of both biometrics and interoperability of the major national biometrics systems.

Archer: Could you speak to how interagency interoperability has made advancements in the area of biometrics since?

Loudermilk: Well, we as a nation have made a significant investment and effort in this direction both within the FBI as well as Homeland Security and DOD. We’ve jointly worked, actually most of the major users of biometrics in the federal government have worked, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop national and international standards for the exchange of biometric information and we’ve adjusted our systems to where they’re highly interoperable, and in fact that standardization effort continues on with new biometric modalities subject to standards right now.

We recently developed a standard for exchange of DNA information beyond purely criminal justice uses, Homeland Security and the military are going to be using DNA information in the future. We’re in the process of developing a standard for the transfer of investigative voice biometrics, so we’ve done a lot with standardization, we’ve done a lot of engineering work to make systems rapidly interoperable, and in the case of some of the Homeland Security Department, to automate back office records so that a search did not require having to go to manual files for information. The FBI has taken an already fast system and made it faster to where our routine criminal inquiries are typically taking less than ten minutes to complete and respond to, routine civil inquiries taking less than an hour to respond to, and when transactions really require a very rapid response, we’re able to give a stoplight kind of indication in under ten seconds.

Archer: Biometrics carries with it privacy and civil liberty issues. Could you explain how the FBI is dealing with this public outcry?

Loudermilk: I think if you look a little deeper you will conclude, as I have, that there’s not a general pubic outcry (which is not to say that there aren’t some who have concerns). You’ll find a few stories in the press and there is a community that is very concerned, frankly inside the government there is a privacy and civil liberties community that is very vigilant about making sure that we comply with the Privacy Act of 1974 as well as various regulations that are in place. So how do we deal with that? Inside the FBI, which