An HS Daily Wire Q&A with IBG's co-founder Raj Nanavati

is consulting?

Nanavati: They’re all related, actually, and mutually supportive. Whether we’re doing consulting or we’re integrating systems, we’re helped by our research into all the alternate products and algorithms and by knowing the science of biometrics really, really well. As consultants, we’re familiar with all the business and visibility and privacy issues, and this helps us with research and also helps us when we’re doing systems integration.

And our systems integration leverages all that. If you’re going to be a really effective integrator, you need to know a technology as well as the people who developed the technology. And you need to be intimately knowledgeable about all of the potential privacy issues involved. If you’re integrating a large database, for example, in support of the Department of State visa program [with 50- to 60-million face images], there will be privacy concerns. The fact that we’ve done privacy assessments, spoken at privacy conferences, worked with the ACLU, and incorporated privacy issues on dozens of other programs before that — all of this enables us to design and deploy a more forward-looking system, better and faster.

So these areas are all closely related. And I believe that IBG is the only firm in the biometrics industry doing research, consulting, and systems integration across all three functional areas.

Daily WireQ: How big an issue in the biometrics industry is concern with privacy?

Nanavati: It varies. We work on a wide array of programs. If an organization wants to use fingerprint devices for access to its network, perhaps privacy isn’t a non-issue but it’s certainly minimized. It’s their employees, it’s their policy, and they’re keeping the data. No problem. But if it’s US-VISIT, under which almost every visitor to the U.S. is fingerprinted, then privacy becomes a huge issue. Likewise with covert surveillance, or the use of biometrics verification at the Super Bowl, say. It’s beginning to be used in cities where surveillance programs are going in and cameras being set up. It’s a huge issue there, too. What’s happening to the data? How is it used? Who has access to it? How are they storing it? All of these issues need to be addressed and working with an organization that has helped develop policy for the public and private sector ensures complicity with these requirements.

So, privacy concerns vary quite a bit. With some programs, it’s very, very high-priority. For example, there was talk of mandating biometric ID