The US terrorist attacks last month have led to increased interest
in biometrics as the authorities try to provide stronger security
at airports and other public places.
In the US, aeronautics company Lockheed-Martin has implemented a
system based on technology from biometrics provider KeyWare that
uses facial and fingerprint recognition for immigration control.
The system checks the fingerprint and facial features of people
entering the country against a criminal database.
The US embarked on a £35m biometrics project known as Human ID at a
Distance following the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia in 1996. Nineteen people were killed when terrorists
detonated a bomb outside the facility housing US and allied forces
supporting the coalition air operation over Iraq.
A large-scale trial was conducted during SuperBowl 2000 in Atlanta
following terrorist threats, in which more than a 100,000 people
were monitored.
Facial recognition technologies are also being deployed in the UK.
Well-publicised trials of a CCTV based system in the London borough
of Newham have reduced street crimes by a third, police and the
local council said.
According to the Department of Transport, the British Airports
Authority is also trailing systems that photograph individuals and
automatically match them against databases of criminal suspects.
Smartcard technology is another way of boosting security when used
in conjunction with biometric security measures.
Dan Cunningham, chairman of the Smart Card Alliance market research
committee looking into the use of smartcards in the US, said that
they could be used to enforce airport security.
"Security personnel could be issued with smartcard ID and use it
when reporting to work," he said. The card's chip would hold a
facial recognition scan of the cardholder. Existing airport video
cameras could even be used to create the scan.
But the large-scale deployment of electronic security systems
raises human rights and data protection issues.
Rupert Battcock, an IT lawyer at Nabarro Nathanson, doubted that
travellers would even be aware of biometrics in action. "This is a
type of closed-circuit TV and the code of practice and laws
concerning how these systems can be used are well defined."
Biometrics solutions applied to fighting terrorisms might not come
under the Data Protection Act, added Battcock.
There is no doubt that biometrics will be used increasingly in the
fight for security, but most experts agree that there will be
problems ahead.
No organisation can yet claim that its systems can easily process
the volume of traffic generated by an airport without serious
changes to how travellers move through terminals and how they board
aircraft.
At Heathrow alone, 65 million passengers and staff pass through the
four terminals. It would take millions of pounds of investment,
lengthy trials and passenger cooperation to test such a system.
Even so, there is no guarantee that even with 95% accuracy, the
huge number of false alerts would diminish. Suspects could still
slip through the net.