Expanding its evaluation of face recognition in the airport environment, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has deployed the technology to a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at a U.S. airport for a data collection effort.
The 30-day trial at TSA’s Terminal 7 international checkpoint at John F. Kennedy in New York involves using a camera stationed near the TSA travel document checker to capture a photo of international travelers and then compare each photo against travel document photographs that have been stored in a database based on outbound flights each day.
CBP has ongoing evaluations of face recognition technology at a single departure gate at eight U.S. airports to track the departure of foreign nationals from the country in compliance with their visas. The agency soon will begin evaluating face recognition systems to identify all inbound passengers on international flights to the U.S. to speed processing and to ensure the individuals are legitimate passport and visa holders.
In one instance, JetBlue [JBLU] is using the face recognition technology at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport to double as the boarding pass for a flight, eliminating the need for passengers to display their ticket to the airline’s gate agent. Delta Airlines [DAL] is evaluating fingerprint technology in place of a boarding pass for select fliers. The airline is also looking at the technology as part of the bag drop process.
“As we continue to deploy technical demonstrations, CBP is assessing the use of biometric technology as part of a future end-to-end process, from check-in to departure, in which travelers use biometrics instead of their boarding pass or ID throughout the security and boarding process,” says John Wagner, deputy executive Assistant Commissioner for the agency’s Office of Field Operations. “Expanding these demonstrations to the TSA process is the next step in CBP’s goal of transforming and improving air travel—making it smoother, seamless and more efficient for travelers—while also enhancing the security of the process.”
For CBP’s evaluation of biometric technology at the TSA checkpoint, outbound travelers will present their boarding pass and identity documentation to the TSA Travel Document Checker in accordance with current procedures. The TSA officer will then direct the individual to a camera near the podium to capture a facial image. Once that step is done, the individual will proceed through the checkpoint as usual.
TSA earlier this year evaluated fingerprint technology at airports in Atlanta and Denver as a faster and more secure way to pass the travel document checker and enter a screening lane. Jose Bonilla, who directs the agency’s Innovation Task Force, says that the trial evaluated contact and contactless fingerprint technology. Results from the pilots are still being evaluated, he says during a presentation at the Department of Homeland Security’s exhibit at the annual Association of the U.S. Army expo in Washington, D.C.
Bonilla’s task force is examining innovative processes and technologies that could help speed and better secure the current checkpoint screening process. He says both types of fingerprint technologies presented challenges. In the case of the contact plates, some travelers balked at putting their hand down on surface left oily by another person’s hand, wanting the plate to wiped down before using it. Some individuals had difficulty figuring out how to swipe their hand through a contactless reader, he says, noting that this is an education issue.
The Biometric Authentication Technology evaluation, or BAT as TSA calls it, was a proof of concept effort, Bonilla says. The evaluation wasn’t just about the types of fingerprint technology but on other things such as fingerprint matching rates, does the technology give “us a high level of confidence with match rates for our PreCheck population that we have in our Secure Flight system,” he says.
Once TSA completes its review of the initial BAT pilot, the agency will make decisions on the next demonstration, Bonilla says. The agency will consider facial recognition as part of future BAT efforts, he adds.
As with its ongoing biometric exit evaluations, CBP will delete any facial images within 14 days during the TSA checkpoint face recognition pilot. The images for the exit evaluation and the checkpoint pilot with TSA are stored in the Travel Verification System (TVS), a database that Unisys [UIS] developed for CBP.
A spokeswoman for CBP tells HSR that in the new demonstration with TSA, the main difference in the matching process versus the exit evaluations is that “each template will be matched against multiple galleries, based on that day’s flight manifests for that particular international terminal, rather than being matched against the templates for only one departing flight’s manifest. Although the traveler photos will be matched against a larger gallery of photos than in previous TVS initiatives, CBP expects that this change will not negatively impact the accuracy, match rate or processing time, but that will all be part of the analysis.”