Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been testing a Biometric Air Exit tracking program. CBP or its airline partners take photos of boarding international passengers for departure to confirm that each passenger is the true bearer of the travel visa. For privacy and personal data security, the facial images and their templates are deleted from the CBP system by the end of the flight. The data is deleted from the overall CBP IT system within 14 days.
Currently, trials
are ongoing in five areas: Atlanta, Washington DC, Houston, Chicago and Las
Vegas. In 2018, CBP will begin a widespread expansion of the program, working
with stakeholders to get commitments needed to deploy the biometric exit
technology.
Two main issues that have been delaying expansion
have been resolved. One solution to greatly improve the efficiency of the
process was to be able to query a temporary database of photos, instead of the complete
federal database of photos, when checking the identity of the passengers.
The other solution involved resolving the installation of a
technology whose footprint didn’t fit the airline boarding gates. The CBP
collaborated with the airlines to resolve the problem. The airlines developed a
new interface so that a large system doesn’t have to be installed at the boarding gates.
The CBP expects to have Biometric Air Exit technology
installed nationwide within four years. The next trials will involve expanding
biometric exit technology to land ports of entry. Fingerprint biometric trials are expected to be in place by the end of 2017, with facial recognition trials to
begin in 2018.
By Mark Rockwell, Nov. 28, 2017 for FCW.com | Homeland
Security
www.cbp.gov
Official website of the Department of Homeland Security
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