Biometrics Are Driving Terrorists Bats

Written by Steve Goodman

SOTECH 2010 Volume: 8 Issue: 2 (March)

The Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems is tasked with the mission of maintaining, operating and deploying biometric scanners and security systems in support of combat operations. “Enterprise” is a good moniker, because these “sci-fi” devices seem to take more than a little inspiration from that fictional starship.

“Simply put, biometrics are those physical characteristics unique to an individual, such as a finger or palm print, iris pattern, retina pattern or face image. Devices that can scan these biometrics and compare them to a database are used to authenticate and verify identity. In the field, biometric scanners are used for the verification and authentication of personnel,” said James O’Looney, division director, Networks and Sensors, Trident Systems.

Trident manufactures and provides DoD with an Individual Combat Identification Device (ICID). “In our case,” continued O’Looney, “our system uses a fingerprint reader that allows base operations to authenticate personnel and track particular troop movements.”

In recent years, DoD has certainly recognized the important role that biometrics play in prosecuting the global war on terrorism, protecting our troops in the field, and preserving national security. Under a DoD directive, the Biometric Task Force (BTF) was created, whose mission is to promote the development and implementation of biometric technologies for Combatant Commands, services and agencies, and to encourage the use of biometric technologies to empower the warfighter by improving operational effectiveness on the battlefield.

“BTF is very interested in developing standards,” said Lisa Swan, deputy director of the Army G3/5/7 Biometrics Task Force. “If everything is built to a standard, even as they evolve and we get into new modalities and emerging technologies, we will use those standards so they will be able to interoperate and share data. That really is the key, because the whole power of biometrics is being able to share information.”

The main components of DoD’s biometric infrastructure are the Biometric Automated Tool Set (BAT), Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) and the Automated Biometric Identification System, or ABIS. “Everything needs to be able to collect data and be able to share it with ABIS,” said Swan.

BTF’s goal is not to see that each individual biometric device has the ability to communicate directly with one another, but rather to assure that they share collected data. In other words, if a HIIDE in Afghanistan encounters a particular person, and that same person is scanned by another device down the line—for example at a checkpoint in Iraq—if both devices are tied correctly into ABIS, operators will know that this person has been encountered before, who they are, and whether they should be allowed access or detained.

ABIS is a robust multiplatform technology. It can do finger, face, iris, and/or palm matching. This is important for accurate identification, because if a fingerprint does not score high enough to make a positive ID, combining the scores with facial recognition or some other parameter could help achieve a high enough score.

ABIS has been online since January 2009. According to BTF, ABIS contains over 3.5 million records representing about 2.3 million different identities. The system has been used to make over 1.5 million successful matches thus far.

WHO GOES THERE?

Biometrics are playing an ever more important role in processing and identifying insurgents and detainees in theater, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. We all have the ability to immediatly recognize and spot the face of a friend coming towards us in a crowd—it is the intention of biometric technologies to give warfighters that same ability to recognize a friend from foe in urban insurgency or other hostile environments.

BAT and HIIDE technology are used in conjunction to collect and store critical biometric data. HIIDE is used to capture fingerprint, eye, and facial data; and BAT is the software that is used to process and match the data with the database BAT software is designed to operate on portable collection devices such as HIIDE, or on computer workstations at fixed locations.

Oberon, a division of the Stanley Corporation, is a key developer of BAT technologies, and has deployed more than 5,000 BAT systems worldwide.

“The Oberon division of Stanley is a sub-contractor on two different contracts that support PEO-EIS, and under those contracts we provide software engineering services to the Biometric Automated Tool Set, as well as subject matter expertise and training for BAT, and field service and support for that system,” siad Jim Brabston, senior vice president mission systems, Stanley. He continued, “You can run our software on any computer, so basically, what that means is you can use it with any peripheral device that does biometrics capture. So those various hardware devices, such as HIIDE, are used to enroll people into the biometrics system, then we catalog that data on behalf of the government, we keep it secure, and we use that data to do matching against any of the ‘watch lists’ that are out there, and tell the good guys from the bad.”

Also in use in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are biometric technologies developed by CSC. “Traditionally, the fingerprint that was collected had to be transmitted to a large centrally located, authoritative database,” said John S. Hooks, Jr., director, CSC Identity Labs, and program manager, DoD Biometrics Task Force, CSC. “Today’s handheld devices are so much more advanced that they contain subsets of the authoritative databases, or ‘watch lists’ of up to 100,000 individual biometrics and can conduct local matching on the device—no need to send the fingerprint file away for immediate matching. In addition to matching fingerprints, many systems can match iris and face as well.”

Hooks went on to describe how such in-field biometric devices are leveraging the latest in “smart” technology. “Another feature of some systems today is the ability to read a biometrically enabled ‘smart’ identification card, on which the biometric data of the cardholder is embedded on the card itself. The cardholder inserts his/her card in the appropriate device and places his finger, or in some systems the iris, in a position in which the device can ‘capture’ it. This type of biometric capability is used extensively in base access/force protection systems CSC has provided throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.”

CSC’s Base Identification System for Access (BISA) was actually one of the first such biometrically enabled access system deployed in Iraq. It was deployed in direct response to a terrorist attack on a U.S. facility in Mosul, in which a suicide bomber gained access to a base using a forged “dumb,” or non-biometric, ID card. The resulting attack killed over 20 Americans. The BISA system replaced that dumb card with a biometricenabled smart card.

According to commanders in the field, biometrics have the same kind of deterrent effect on the bad guys that putting up an alarm system sign on your home has on thieves.

You might even say biometrics is driving the bad guys “BATS.”

INCREASED NEED

Clearly the success of BAT, HIIDE, BISA and ABIS in identifying and apprehending enemy combatants saves lives, and they are incalculable assets. However, creating a database of potential threats is not the only benefit of biometric technology.

Nowadays, and especially as it relates to the Special Operations community, there is a proliferation of mission critical devices that are handheld. The problem this has created for the warfighter on the ground is, how does he or she know that a given device has not literally fallen into the wrong hands? “Biometrics,” said O’Looney, “can be very effective for in-field authentication, so that the soldiers on the ground can be sure that something that they are communicating with wirelessly, from a location a distance away that they cannot see, is indeed being operated by the right person.”

THE EYES HAVE IT

No doubt biometrics will play an ever-expanding role in the global war on terrorism. “Biometrics have been around a long time. We started with fingerprints, and now are moving into irises, retinas, facial recognition, and we intend to continue to explore new modalities, maybe DNA. We also want to look at how we can use biometrics more remotely; also, we will of course be looking at how we can do things faster and cheaper,” said Swan.

DoD recognizes that many challenges remain before there can be full scale implementation of biometric protocols across all operations, not the least of which is the need for a consolidated database and infrastructure, and a lack of trained personnel. Still, the use of biometrics is acknowledged as a key factor in U.S. counterinsurgency strategies at the highest levels of DoD and BTF. As such, the use of biometrics to better enable operations to separate insurgents from the populace and more directly target the bad guys will continue to grow.

“What biometrics technology does is allow people to be very, very precise in what they want to, or need to do in terms of pinpointing operations, so that they do not broadly impact people in a negative way. Biometrics add a level of precision to the warfighter in implementing his or her mission,” said Stanley’s Brabston.

As Trident’s O’Looney put it, “Biometrics is an extraordinarily growing field. Beyond combat operations. Biometric scanners and devices are proving very useful in identifying detainees and others in custody. In these insurgent environments the identification of friendlies and enemies is much more difficult. More importantly, the global war on terror has coincided with this phenomenal explosion of global information. And so, our enemies’ maturity and sophistication has grown dramatically. Biometrics provide a powerful line of defense against terrorism that can be enacted through falsification of identity.” ♦

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