Customs and Border Protection (CBP) expects that it will begin rolling out the deployment of a congressionally-mandated biometric exit system as some airports this year to help verify the departure of foreign nationals from the U.S., but the agency isn’t likely fully deploy the systems at any one airport initially, says John Wagner, deputy executive assistant commissioner for CBP’s Office of Field Operations.
Wagner said there isn’t a firm date yet for deploying the exit solution, saying that the schedule is unlikely to include an entire airport. Instead, it will be on a “case by case basis” depending on the airlines and airports, he said.
Under the administration of former President Barack Obama, CBP was charged with deploying a biometric exit system at major U.S. airports by the end of 2018. President Donald Trump earlier this year issued an executive order that included a directive accelerating the biometric deployments.
Wagner said CBP’s plans are in line with the objectives set forth by both the Obama and Trump administrations.
CBP since June 2016 has been pilot testing the facial recognition system on a single international flight departing daily from Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, demonstrating that the technology doesn’t impact the passenger boarding process of the airline, that travelers are accepting of the facial technology, and that existing traveler photos can be used for matching, according to a slide displayed by Wagner.
Wagner also said that all travelers are having their photo taken even though the mandate is targeted at foreign nationals. When the system confirms that a traveler is a U.S. citizen, it drops their record, he said at a conference hosted by the Global Business Travel Association in late April.
Wagner also suggested that with all the information the government has on travelers—the State Department has passport records and photos—that there isn’t a reason for CBP to check someone’s passport if the facial recognition technology is deployed and the backend infrastructure ties together all the relevant data the agency needs to know about a traveler.
“We don’t need to if we confirm your picture against the photograph we have on file,” he said.
Kevin McAleenan, acting commissioner of CBP, on May 1 said that beginning on June1 and continuing about every two weeks through September, the agency will be rolling out to major airports a technical demonstration of the facial recognition-based biometric exit system. Speaking at the connect:ID conference in Washington, D.C., he said the system will be at a level beyond the Atlanta pilot.
The desired solution will include utilizing cloud infrastructure for hosting images and doing real-time biometric matching. The testing this summer will assess the lighting conditions in different airports, how different airlines board their passengers and the impacts on the operating concept, Wagner said. The upcoming tests will also allow CBP to assess its own metrics such as how quickly its gallery of photos is staged and the matching speed, he said.
CBP will also be working with the airlines and the Transportation Security Administration as it rolls out the biometric exit system, Wagner said. TSA by this fall plans to conduct proof of concept demonstrations at two airports of fingerprint technology to verify the identity of trusted travelers using PreCheck screening lanes.
Steve Karoly, acting assistant administrator for TSA’s Office of Requirements and Capabilities Analysis, tells a House Homeland Security panel that Biometric Authentication Technology, also called BAT, could eventually automate Ticket Document Checker process by “verifying passenger identity and Secure Flight vetting status, eliminating the need for a boarding pass, and grant or deny access to passengers via an electronic gate to the security checkpoint.”
Wagner said earlier this year that CBP would like to find a way to ultimately tie in his agency’s use of biometrics with TSA’s plans for using the technology at security checkpoints.
Wagner and his colleagues have also said that airlines and airports should be able to take advantage of the biometric systems that CBP will be deploying. He noted that at one time airlines were “vehemently opposed” to adding a biometric exit system because it would further congest the process of boarding passengers and because, under some suggestions, it would add responsibilities for the checks to the carriers.
A biometric exit system “can’t be standalone, stovepiped technology,” Wagner said. Instead, the agency is looking at how it could fit within airlines’ business models in terms of how they currently board aircraft, and instead of interfering with this process might “enhance it,” he said. The question is could the photo of a traveler taken at the gate “replace the boarding pass,” he said, adding that the agency will be pilot testing the concept with an airline this year.
The use by airports and airlines of the biometric data CBP collects might also be applied to other parts of the “airport experience,” Wagner said. The agency is in discussions now with its stakeholders about this.
“Any place you show your ID at an airport could be replaced with a camera,” Wagner said. “And when I say real-time, it’s within two seconds” to verify someone’s identity.
Airports still have concerns about CBP’s plans for implementing a biometric exit solutions but things are “turning the corner” for the positive, Matthew Cornelius, vice president for Air Policy at Airports Council International-North America, said at connect:ID on May 1. Still, airports are concerned that CBP might reduce its staffing levels when it implements the solution before its impact on operations is fully understood, he said.
Cornelius also said that if the exit system triggers, airports are concerned that local law enforcement, which they pay for, will have to respond. He said the new omnibus appropriations bill that congressional negotiators agreed to this week to fund the government for FY ’17 suggests that airports will be footing the bill for the impacts that arise from the system. Airports have billions of dollars in capital improvement needs they need to address, he said.
There are also concerns about privacy, standardization across airports, reliability, and that going forward that CBP’s implementation of the exit solution doesn’t transform to a “top-down” approach that excludes the stakeholder community, Cornelius said.. This was the initial approach, he said, before CBP switched to stakeholder engagement.
Currently foreign nationals arriving to the U.S. have their fingerprints checked against their visa and sometimes other records to ensure the arriving individual is the same person that applied to travel to the U.S. Wagner said CBP’s plan is to convert the arrival process to a facial recognition check with the fingerprint records in the background.
A pilot test using facial recognition for arrivals is expected to occur at a U.S. airport this year, he said.
Fingerprint checks would still be done overseas before a foreign traveler departs for the U.S. but the arrivals process could be made easier with the facial recognition check, Wagner said. He noted that CBP’s popular Global Entry trusted traveler program that allows members to use kiosks upon arrival to the U.S. to verify their identity and make it easier to get through the customs process could be sped up even more by using cameras and eliminating the kiosks altogether.
If a traveler has nothing to declare, they might not even need to go through by a Customs official for an interview and instead, using the camera check, can walk through an exit gate, he said.
Exit checks of foreign nationals departing the U.S. by plane currently require airlines to provide the passenger manifest data and boarding data to CBP. The biometric check is expected to be another layer to the current process.
CBP, through a fee increased mandated by Congress, has $1 billion to spend over 10 years on a biometric exit system.