News

Biometric identifiers key to U.S. security measures

June 3, 2004

NEW DELHI--In an effort to track down terrorists, the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, or US-VISIT will set up self-service photographic and fingerprinting kiosks at all U.S. airports by 2005 according to an article in India's The Financial Express.

Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. government began fingerprinting and photographing some 23 million foreign visitors arriving at 115 U.S. airports. This is the mandate of the department of homeland security, which runs US-VISIT.

Every port of entry on land, sea and air will have the technology. All U.S. visas and passports will eventually include photos and fingerprints, which the government calls "biometric identifiers."  Additionally all visitors in the U.S. will be a specific number in Homeland Security's database.

According to the story, Washington is believed to be spending almost $8 billion on biometric security, which involves checking biometric information against terrorist watch lists and police databases.