2016 Global Identity Summit Pre-Conference Paper Biometric Interoperability 2021

Transcription

1 2016 Global Identity Summit Pre-Conference Paper Biometric Interoperability 2021 Paper development coordinated by Brian Pittack, DHS/Immigrations and Customs Enforcement

2 This is a community-developed document. Information and viewpoints provided within are not necessarily the opinions of the paper coordinators nor their employers. Special thanks to the MITRE Corporation for their editorial assistance and coordination guidance.

3 Biometric Interoperability 2021 Introduction The 2016 edition of the Global Identity Summit (GIS) will come at a unique time in federal circles, as it will be 50 days before a presidential election and 123 days before the new President takes office. Clearly, this is a very busy time for all federal officials, as they will be working with transition teams to explain current capabilities and draft plans for the next administration to implement. The GIS Planning Committee is using the 2016 conference to assist agencies during this critically important transition period. This information will be equally useful to the private sector as it develops its future strategies. The Planning Committee s ultimate goal is to gather and publicly post information that explains current capabilities and issues, provides a vision of future capabilities, and develops initial concepts for public and/or private activities for the next five years. The Planning Committee has identified approximately 20 critical identity topics to focus on at the 2016 GIS. Within each topical session, speakers will present information on the current state as well as discuss needs and priorities for the future. The session moderator will then invite feedback from audience members via an open floor and/or targeted workshops. This paper serves as a read-ahead on one of these topics, so that GIS attendees can be prepared to participate in onsite discussions. Level Setting Introduction The Homeland/National Security session highlights the interoperability of the Department of Homeland Security s Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) with biometric systems and associated biometric identity services operated by the U.S. and its international mission partners. The session focuses on interoperability from its early beginnings to how interoperability supports users today and then looks to areas where it needs to expand or improve to meet emerging needs, and ends with a clearer picture of what interoperability should look like in 2021 and beyond. Background: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), operates IDENT, the largest biometric identification system in the United States. IDENT contains the biometric identity of more than 200 million people and processes approximately 300,000 fingerprint and iris searches daily, returning search results to front line officers in as few as 10 seconds. IDENT was developed in the 1990 s as a two-fingerprint system specifically to serve the U.S. Border Patrol s need to rapidly identify repeat illegal border crossers and has grown to serve the needs of more than 45 domestic and international customers as well as the more than 18,000 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies who access IDENT via the FBI s Next Generation Identification System. Additionally, IDENT contains valuable identity

4 2016 Global Identity Summit information from the Department of Defense s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS). The ability of submitters to make match information against the three primary U.S. Government systems has a lasting benefit to the user community. As new modalities and uses of biometrics continue to develop, interoperability will need to adjust accordingly. September 2016 marks the 10-year anniversary of interoperability between IDENT and the FBI s Next Generation Identification System (NGI). What started as a bulk exchange of specific data sets relevant to each agency s mission has grown into a real-time exchange of fingerprints and associated information to support front-line law enforcement officers in the field, as well as adjudicators determining whether someone should be granted a benefit or credential. GIS attendees will receive a very brief overview of the IDENT system and then panelists will discuss how and why interoperability began, lessons learned from the initial efforts to share data, and the current state of interoperability between and among different government systems with ample time allotted to answer audience questions or respond to comments. Current Capabilities IDENT is the DHS-designated repository for biometric identification and contains the biometric identities of more than 200 million people as well as an unsolved latent file. IDENT receives fingerprints, photographs, irises (currently limited to U.S. Border Patrol), and associated biographic information directly from DHS Component agencies, The Department of State s Bureau of Consular Affairs, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and foreign partners primarily via real time transactional searches with some bulk data ingests. IDENT automatically matches or attempts to match those biometrics to the more than 200 million identities in IDENT as well as searching them against the unsolved latent file. In most cases, IDENT stores these transactions for future matching by other users and shares match information with the requestor as appropriate. Through interoperability, IDENT maintains a real-time connection with the FBI s NGI, allowing access to the U.S. Government s two largest biometric systems, ensuring valuable identity information is not overlooked when querying a subject s biometrics. Interoperability allows each agency to maintain its own information without having to duplicate data. Biometric searches originating from IDENT customers query IDENT and are also sent to the FBI for a search of NGI. Likewise, when Federal (non-dhs), state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement agencies submit fingerprint queries to the FBI, the prints are forwarded to IDENT for a search. Each system may maintain a record when there is a match in the other system. Interoperability is a robust and valuable capability for users needing identification services. IDENT/NGI Interoperability is governed by an interagency Memorandum of Understanding and defined in technical interface documentation. The DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management, the FBI Criminal Justice Information Systems Division, and the DOD s Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency work closely with their respective customers and each other to identify areas for improvement, to coordinate technical changes, and to analyze the data that is exchanged in order to constantly improve and enhance the services to the users. The growth of strong interagency partnerships has allowed the agencies to better understand the capabilities and limitations of the two systems as well as the different business needs of the biometric community from a holistic view. This partnership will also allow for interoperability to move beyond the current model of being primarily fingerprint based, and serve an expanding customer base. 2

5 Biometric Interoperability 2021 Future Requirements Introduction This session will begin with a very brief recap of the level setting session, which reminded and informed the community of the original need for interoperable biometric systems and how that need developed into the interconnectivity in use today. This quick overview of the first session leads into discussion of the services and capabilities the biometric user community needs to perform their missions today, in 2021, and beyond. The panelists will be represented by biometric systems operators, as well as the user community. Future Vision In 2014, the FBI introduced Next Generation Identification (NGI), replacing the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), providing new biometric capabilities to their users. In 2018, DHS will begin incrementally replacing IDENT with the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) system. These replacements of the original automated systems are paving the way for the delivery of new modalities, new services, more accurate matching, and faster throughput. The long-standing fingerprint-based biometric paradigm has shifted. No longer does a subject need to be in a dedicated space for capturing biometrics, nor is the fingerprint the only way to identify someone. Mobile devices, smart phones, iris cameras, and facial recognition have risen to the forefront of discussions about what is coming next. Emerging threats and situations may rapidly shift attention to other modalities like speech, vein, or gait. In developing new services and capabilities in large scale systems, customer requirements are thoroughly detailed, but this session allows the broader community of biometrics professionals to also ask questions of the panelists and engage in discussion about the future of interoperability. Future Planning While the plans for developing HART are well underway, and NGI has already been successfully deployed, the discussions, questions, and comments captured in this session allow for the operators of the biometric systems to look beyond what the technology in automated systems is capable of and examine more closely whether policy and privacy documentation needs to be reviewed and/or revised in order to allow for enhancements to the sharing of this important data. IDENT/NGI interoperability is mandated, based off of a historic and tragic gap in the flow of data. By identifying areas to improve and expand interoperability based off of input from the entire user community we can hopefully identify other possible gaps and work to ensure all the identity data that can be shared is shared without the need to duplicate information. 3

6 2016 Global Identity Summit Workshop Plans Introduction: The opening of the Homeland/National Security workshop session will allow approximately 10 minutes for audience members to ask any follow-up questions from the first two sessions in case the panels were not able to get to them during those sessions. Following that, the audience and panelists will be asked to identify three to four key topic areas from the prior sessions that they would like to explore in more detail. An example may be, what is fusion? We will then break into groups based on those topics identified and allow participants and panelists to discuss those subjects together. After a period of group discussions, we will come back together and each group will briefly present their topic. This group workshop will further contribute to ideas regarding the current state of biometric interoperability services, and identify areas for improvement. The goal is to generate ideas or address gaps still present in the technologies discussed and allow the organizers of the session to track these issues. 4