There's just one problem with the SFO machines. They're not turned on. The director of San Jose State University's Biometric Test Center, James Wayman, says that's because, although the biometric scanners actually worked fine, they cost more than they were worth. Built in response to a 1990 law that mandated Immigration waiting periods be limited to 45 minutes, SFO's machines are part of an INS program called INSPASS (INS Passenger Accelerated Service System). Since 1993, INSPASS kiosks have been installed in eight international airports across North America. At each kiosk a machine measures the precise geometry of the human hand, unique for each person, and confirms the identity of those who have already enrolled their hand measurements into the INSPASS system. "From the point of view of a user like myself, this was a wonderful system," says Wayman. "Getting an INSPASS card was free. Admittedly, it took me about a half hour, but I never stood in an Immigration line after that." Wayman believes that the cost of INSPASS' complex 30-minute enrollment process overrode the amount of money the agency saved by letting INSPASS users breeze through immigration without taking up the time of its interviewers. He says that SFO's INSPASS machines had been operational at SFO, but when INS relocated the machines to the new terminal in December 2000, the agency never turned them back on. INS spokeswoman Kimberly Weissman characterized INSPASS as a pilot program and said that the "Office of Inspections now is looking at new technology to upgrade the INSPASS machines" and that "we wouldn't be deploying those machines in the way they are set up now."

In March 2000, a Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report found the INSPASS benefits to be "insignificant," and today the INSPASS program is "basically going away," according to International Biometric Industry Association executive director Richard Norton. "INSPASS taught us a lot of very good lessons about how to implement a system of border controls for what are now called registered travelers." These lessons should serve as a warning to lawmakers, Wayman says. "History has taught us that these systems are very difficult to implement," he says.

Wayman says that the Enhanced Border Security Act, which calls for the INS to take a unique biometric identifier, like a fingerprint or a face scan, from every alien entering the United States by 2005, is moving faster than the biometrics community is ready to go. "Why (do) they think this time it will be easy when, in the past, large-scale applications like INSPASS turned out to be difficult?" he asks.

"It is a huge job, there's no question about it," Norton says. His organization estimates that the infrastructure required by the act will cost at least $1 billion.

But Norton says the INS really has no choice but to look to biometric technology as the way to more carefully scrutinize certain travelers without bogging down the borders. "You're not going to be able to put more lanes on the bridge; you're not going to widen the infrastructure at the border; and you're not going to hire new people, so technology lies at the core of how you're going to speed all this up."
Weissman, of the INS, said the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act mandates that these biometric systems to be rolled out accordingly: All air and sea ports should have them by 2003; the 50 busiest land points of entry should have them by 2004; and that the entire system should be online by 2005. She added that something called the Entry-Exit Project Team [EEPT] has been set up to look into this. It is "an integrated team consisting of the INS, DOJ, Customs, and Department of Transportation," she said. "The use of machine readable documents with biometrics, combined with accurate intelligence data, will provide a greater level of security at the ports of entry."

According to Wayman, legislation like the Enhanced Border Security Act and the Patriot Act are setting ill-considered biometric policy for the United States that will, at best, slow down the adoption of biometric systems and, at worst, take years to correct. "It's just causing confusion," he says. "Sept. 11 has not helped anybody." He says that the United States should look to Britain for a biometric policy model. A group within U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Office of the e-Envoy is laying the groundwork for a national biometrics policy. The group, called the Communications-Electronics Security Group, is developing a standardized philosophy for testing biometric devices, and establishing a methodology for assessing the security level of biometric devices based on the ISO Common Criteria standard.

In the United States, says Wayman, there are so many different standards under development right now that we may end up with a confused mess, instead of any meaningful standard of biometric identification. "You're getting four standards for fingerprinting, one standard for iris recognition, and a couple of standards for face recognition."

"It's the Beta/VHS problem all over again," he says, "only you may not know which is better: VHS or Beta."