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

is really the area that I know the most about, as you would expect the Privacy Act does have exceptions for national security information. The law actually exempts certain kinds of systems from the privacy act, but nevertheless we take it very seriously, so as a matter of policy, 100 percent of FBI systems undergo a privacy threshold assessment and if necessary a privacy impact assessment.

If it’s a national security system there will not be a system of record notice, but the same assessments, reviews and approvals are done and required for all of the systems that are published in the federal register and that the public knows about. We have privacy attorneys in all of our major divisions, we have a staff at our Criminal Justice Information Services Division that address these kinds of issues and it’s throughout the organization, the Department of Justice, as a part of their oversight of the FBI reviews our privacy impact assessments and actually approves them. That’s one of the conditions for systems going into operational use and continuing operational use and these have to be periodically reviewed. We occasionally will have public discussions with the general public, right now with facial recognition we’re going through a series inside the federal government, of legal forums, to explore all of the issues that will eventually culminate in public forums that interested parties can come and talk to us and get answers, register their objections, and so on. I recently attended a session of one of our advisory policy boards where we had people from the general public who asked to address the board and were granted time to do that on an issue that had privacy implications. That’s what they wanted to talk about. We have a process within the government and more broadly with the interested citizenry to engage them on these issues, listen to what they have to say and try and take it into account.

Archer: Explain why ensuring a consistent and accurate message across the biometric community is important? Maybe talk on how it’s being dealt with currently?

Loudermilk: Not everyone is aware, but a number of people are aware, that this truly does impact upon public safety. The ability to identify a population that’s trying to conceal themselves that would do us harm, is particularly important. The ability to identify serious criminals wanted for major offenses when they’ve come into contact