Ridge presses for biometric data in passports

The outgoing U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge, called for a new international standard for putting biometric data such as fingerprints on passports.

In a speech Friday at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Ridge said that the fight against terrorism requires a global approach to developing the technology and assuring that its use becomes common practice.

“Common international standards of biometrics must be developed. In my view, the sooner, the better,” Ridge said. “We believe that biometrics is an extraordinary technological tool. It cannot only accurately identify and crosscheck travelers and potential terrorists before they enter our countries, but biometrics also provide increased travel document security and important personal identity protections.”

The address caps a week of speeches by Ridge, who steps down from his job on Feb. 1, extolling the virtues of biometric data on passports. On Thursday in a speech before the European Policy Centre in Brussels, Ridge announced the launch of a registered traveler pilot program being carried out in partnership with the government of the Netherlands to provide a “fast track” plan that would allow travelers to produce biometric and biographic information voluntarily in an effort to speed themselves through airport immigration checks.

Ridge, who told the audience that he enrolled in the program, said that a fingerprint or iris scan is all that is needed for quick passenger identification, which would in turn expedite processing “low-risk passengers” through security. “The Trans Atlantic Partnership and the international community would benefit greatly from an agreement on a set of international standards for capturing, analyzing, storing, reading, sharing and protecting this sensitive information, ensuring maximum interoperability between systems… and maximum privacy for our citizens,” Ridge said.

Ridge and the U.S. government have faced a fairly receptive audience in the European Union (E.U.) to the notion of biometric technology in passports and the belief that the technology required is rapidly becoming ready for roll out on a wide scale.

The E.U. remains committed to instituting a system for biometric passports despite backing away earlier this month from plans to include biometric identifiers on the several million visas it grants every year. The move came after concerns that interference among multiple chips on different visas could make the proposed system unworkable.The E.U. is now looking into creating a Visa Information System to centralize and store all information relating to visa applications. Officials said they expect to get such a system up and running by 2007.

The U.K. Passport Service (UKPS) has also just completed its six month trial of biometric technology involving 10,000 volunteers and plans to report on its finding in the next two or three months, a U.K. government spokesman from the Home Office said Friday.

The U.K. wants to create a centralized database that is expected to contain such information as a person’s name, address, date of birth, gender, immigration status and a confirmed biometric feature such as an electronic fingerprint, or a scan of the iris or face.

Atos Origin SA, the company that ran the trial for the U.K. government, tested each of the three biometrics traits.

A chip with biometric facial identifiers will be included in passports by the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006, which will in turn “build the base” for the ID card plan, the Home Office spokesman said. The UKPS has already determined that it will initially use a facial recognition biometric chip in the British passport, he said.

Critics have warned that it is unclear how much information or what types of information could eventually be entered into the database, or even who would be given access to such databases. Additionally, security experts have questioned whether such a vast databases of personal information could ever be free of errors and that they make for appealing targets for hackers and terrorists.