Fingerprints Plus
MORE BIOMETRIC MODALITIES AND MISSION CAPABILITIES EYED TO SUPPORT THE WARFIGHTER AND ENHANCE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING.
Current missions within the global war on terrorism demand that special operations forces and other military units rapidly identify enemy combatants with an extraordinarily high degree of fidelity. Biometric data, derived from measurable physical and behavioral characteristics that help establish and verify an individual’s identity, are a combat enabler to help deployed units meet this requirement.
Technology improvements are providing an increasing number of equipment solutions to bolster the biometrics tool kits of USSOCOM and other DoD components—with the promise of more innovative and intriguing solutions on the way.
SITREP
“Biometrics data include fingerprints, iris and retina patterns, facial structure, voice characteristics, blood vessel patterns, hand geometry, odor, DNA, and movement characteristics such as gait or keystroke patterns,” explained USSOCOM spokesperson Lieutenant Commander Marc Boyd.
Currently, SOF use commercial-off-the-shelf equipment originally designed for law enforcement applications to collect biometric data from personnel on-site. “SOCOM currently has biometric systems fielded which are capable of collecting fingerprints and matching them against a DoD repository of fingerprints from foreign partners and persons of interest in the region of operations,” pointed out Boyd. “A number of different iris collection devices are also being used. These systems are used at forward operating bases and during mobile operations,” he added. The command was unable to further discuss current biometrics products in the SOF tool kit.
As a reference point, the U.S. Marines “employ biometric data— iris and fingerprint—along with photos and contextual information to deny anonymity to insurgents and foreign fighters within the general population,” noted 1st Lieutenant Geraldine Carey, public affairs officer, Marine Corps Systems Command.
Biometrics are also being put through their paces in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters for managing election worker training, credentialing local police forces and supporting other missions involving non-combatants and other gray-force members.
SUPPORTING THE BIOMETRICS MANTRA
The industry team is making available for SOF and other warfighters an increasing number of products that conform to the DoD biometric equipment mantra of smaller, lighter, faster and more rugged— and able to operate in harsh environmental conditions.
The dry, sandy environmental conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and other constraints have plagued the current generation of deployed fingerprint readers. One product that has captured the biometrics lessons learned of the GWOT and was recently made available for deployment with warfighters as part of the U.S. Army’s Biometrics Automated Toolset program is Lumidigm’s Venus Fingerprint Sensor.
Lumidigm’s fingerprint sensor technology is based on multispectral imaging, or light-based devices, that scans and records images of capillaries and other subdermal structures and establishes a foundation for fingerprints. The sensor’s software then reconstructs the image of a fingerprint. Lumidigm’s proprietary technology virtually eliminates the issues that have bedeviled comparable legacy systems, including worn fingerprint patterns on many individuals’ hands and adverse weather.
“We use this for multiple reasons,” explained Matthew Ennis, Lumidigm’s vice president of business development. At the top of Ennis’s shortlist was differentiating between a real and fake fingerprint. “You can imagine an unattended access point to a base, with a biometric device. If you had a conventional fingerprint reader it would be easy to create a fake fingerprint and pass through the sensor and checkpoint as an impostor. If you capture that print with Lumidigm’s multispectral imaging you can prevent impostor success. You are able to distinguish: is this a fake fingerprint or a genuine fingerprint on a real individual,” he added.
The company is busy packaging the Venus OEM Module to be included in a handheld system. The product has an IP 65- rated shell that allows it to operate in the sun and other harsh environmental conditions, has low power consumption and is lightweight— weighing in at a few ounces. “This is a relatively small package and lightweight, and captures great prints,” remarked Ennis. On the company’s close-in R&D horizon is completing Phase II of an Army-sponsored small business innovation research (SBIR) project that was awarded in mid-October. “This expands the technology and expands it to the multispectral image capture of a whole hand at one time. It’s a single touch of the hand on a platen, where you can capture all of the fingerprints, the palm prints, the hand geometry and the spectral signature of the hand. This is a lot of information— the most assured biometric in the world in terms of the amount of information for distinguishing between different people, but also very powerful for all of the forensic data that you capture with every single print,” elaborated Ennis.
Further out on the research horizon is an initiative to read fingerprints at a distance. “This is non-contact. The technology is uniquely positioned to be able to do that,” said Ennis. At press time the company had not received a response to a proposal submitted to an unspecified U.S. government customer to develop this technology.
Cross Match Technologies is another firm whose products are on the frontlines in the GWOT.
One widely-used Cross Match offering is the Guardian R Jump Kit, named after the company’s L Scan Guardian 10-print device, and the first and only 10-print scanner to meet all of the U.S. government’s Joint Agency User Group’s (DHS, DoS, NIJ, DoD, BFC and NIST) challenge to industry. The Jump Kit includes the Guardian R, a ruggedized version of the L Scan Guardian with a universal serial bus, as well as a laptop computer with proprietary enrollment software called Mission Oriented Biometric Software designed to be user friendly and mission specific. Other equipment available in Jump Kit is used to collect iris images, digital photographs and voice samples. Biometric data from the kit are placed into a standardized format and loaded into an electronic biometric technology specification record.
The company’s recently introduced I Scan 2 dual iris capture scanner provides the kit’s iris modality feature. “What we did was address earlier lessons learned from DoD biometric iris technology—including earlier equipment being too hard to use and producing a larger percentage of unusable images than they would have liked,” recalled Tom Buss, Cross Match Technologies’ senior vice president, strategic initiatives.
The I Scan 2 device has a small form factor (6 inches by 6 inches by 1.75 inches) and weighs just over one pound. The device’s software finds the iris, stabilizes the image, makes quality assessment adjustments and auto captures both irises in less than 10 seconds. “The operator does nothing except hold the device up to the individual’s eyes,” pointed out Buss.
One interesting application of the company’s jump kit technology is the mini-modal jump kit variant program, which responds to the ever-evolving, onthe- ground scenario in Iraq and is used by hostage rescue team operators. “These are the folks who want to get in and out quickly and want to do a quick check on persons they encounter,” observed Buss.
The kit weighs around 20 pounds and includes a mil-spec battery, the Guardian R ten-print device, a Toughbook computer in a waterproof case and a Began terminal supplied by AOS to provide a satellite communication link over INMARSAT. “These teams get in and put together a skeletal EBTS record—only with fingerprints—and send those prints over the satellite communications link. The prints are vetted in the DoD Automated Biometric Identification System and, if necessary, by the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. They are realizing turn-around times in the range of about four minutes,” pointed out Buss.
Two other representative DoD programs are the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE)— the foundation of the Marine Corps’ biometric systems.
BAT is an automated personnel enrollment and tracking system that collects biometric data. The toolset’s software runs on a ruggedized laptop PC, which uses various peripherals for collection of iris, fingerprints, photo and biographical information. “The collected data is stored onto a central server located on a secure network. Biometric data can later be compared against forensic information gathered at another date or location,” said Carey.
BAT software acquisition is performed by the U. S. Army Language and Technology Office (LTO), but the hardware is produced by various companies including Panasonic, Cross Match, SecuriMetrics and Canon.
HIIDE is a multimodal biometric system that collects and compares fingerprints, iris images and facial photos against a downloaded personnel watch list. The HIIDE is a portable device that may be used in tethered or untethered (stand-alone) modes to provide a biometric identification capability to tactical users. When screening individuals, biometrics can be collected with HIIDE and then downloaded to the BAT database for future use.
The HIIDE device is produced by Securi- Metrics and its software is integrated with the BAT system through the LTO.
SORTING OUT BLUES, GRAYS AND REDS
Trident Systems’ individual combatant identification (iCID) is a system for tracking personnel in a localized area and proving the identity of those personnel through biometric authentication. According to the company, “The complete system is comprised of an iCID pager which communicates to iCID dismounted intelligence situation mapboard [DISM].” The mapboard can display the location of all iCID pagers on military maps including the digital feature analysis display variety. “The DISM operator can query any pager to determine its identity or require its user to verify the identity via the pager’s fingerprint scanner.”
The iCID pager can store up to 10 fingerprint templates in its memory. Of interest, iCID is not deployed in a program of record.
MEETING FUTURE REQUIREMENTS
“As far as future challenges are concerned, the development of stand-off biometric systems with the ability to collect and match facial and iris images onthe- move and at a distance would add a tremendous capability to SOF,” said USSOCOM’s Boyd. Another biometrics mission looms on the horizon. “SOCOM’s programs seek to expand into ‘combat forensics’ capabilities to gather latent biometric data as well,” he concluded.
Industry projects that hold promise to address these and other evolving SOCOM requirements are being completed under three SOCOM SBIR projects (06-004) for tactical biometric registration and recognition suite that were awarded in September 2006.
Azimuth, Inc.’s project proposed to research all available biometric technologies that could possibly be designated and repackaged into a lightweight, rugged, portable and user-friendly biometric collection toolset. Azimuth said, “Our proposed design will encompass the requirements necessary for the screening and processing of individuals encountered within designated military operational environments. Software applications will comply with biometric application programming interfaces (BioAPI) international standards for the operating system and biometric service provider interfaces, utilizing international character sets and external interface requirements of national and international biometric data sets. Our proposed application will be standardsbased and therefore capable of utilizing many vendor sensor products, considering operational requirements such as weight, size, power and cost.”
For its part, Spaceflight Systems Corp. stated that a fast pattern recognition algorithm has been developed and tested that demonstrates exceptional multi-modal performance in fused facial recognition, palm-print recognition, and fingerprint recognition even under degraded conditions. “This same algorithm has also demonstrated exceptional performance on voice recognition and is easily configured to operate on any input that exhibits a pattern, e.g. iris scan.”
Ultra-Scan Corporation proposed to develop a rugged, oneman portable multimodal biometric solution offering reliability, high performance and standardized data outputs for use in any operational environment under extreme temperatures and heavy moisture. The company will “leverage prior multimodal experience and developments to achieve the functional design of a tactical biometric registration and recognition suite which will incorporate voice print, facial, rolled fingerprint and iris biometric technologies.”
USSOCOM and industry representatives indicated the resultsto- date of these three projects were not currently releasable beyond the government-industry teams. ♦