Biometrics Standards
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have issued a call for comments on their draft standards for biometrics.
Biometrics involve identifying individuals by unique characteristics such as fingerprints, faces, irises and palms. Because biometrics are unique and nearly impossible to forge, they help prevent fraud and identity theft. At the same time, they provide a convenient way for consumers to establish and verify their identities. Biometric technologies are increasingly being used to restrict access to secure work areas, to make identity documents such as passports or government IDs more tamper-resistant, and to conduct terrorism-related screening, check for prior criminal history, or assess whether an individual previously violated immigration law, as part of government program eligibility determinations or security risk assessments.
The NSTC Policy for Enabling the Development, Adoption and Use of Biometric Standards established a framework to reach interagency consensus on biometric standards for the federal government. It ensured that federal agencies such as the Departments of State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security collect and exchange different types of biometric data in specific standardized formats. For example, the use of such standards ensures that biometric data on known or suspected terrorists collected by the Department of Defense in war zones are also useable by Department of Homeland Security’s screening operations at U.S. border crossings. The standards registry* is the result of interagency analysis and deliberation on numerous, often contradictory, standards currently available, and specifies which standards U.S. government agencies should use.
Public comments are due soon.
The standards registry is available at www.biometrics.gov/standards and the document can also be downloaded here. Vendors of biometric technologies, biometric researchers, law enforcement officials or others may send comments on the draft standard to standards@biometrics.gov by March 10. The subcommittee will review these comments and make any necessary adjustments to the registry before submitting it to COT for final approval.