Biometric Consortium: INS Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPASS)
INS Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPASS)
Ronald J. Hays
INS
4 January 1996
It's probably obvious to most travelers that the world has changed in
the last decade. In the past, the right of travel was only paid lip
service in most countries. Only recently, with the convergence of
democratic trends around the world and the advent of relatively cheap
international air travel, have people been able to exercise the right
to travel.
International air travel, in terms of passengers flown, has doubled
in the last ten years and is expected to double again by the end of
this decade. In the United States, looking at entries made by land,
sea, and air in 1991, there were 455 million entries made to the
United States. By 1993 that number had increased to 483 million
entries, almost twice the entire population of the United States and
there is an incredible amount of money involved. The United States
Travel and Tourism Administration believes the travel industry
produces 10.2 percent of the World's Gross National Product. The
recent White House Conference on Travel and Tourism reported that
travel and tourism in the United States alone, created a $21.5
billion trade surplus, provided 12 million jobs, and generated $56
billion in tax receipts.
The ease with which people now travel, while a tremendous economic
boon to countries on the receiving end, has not been without cost.
The infrastructure necessary to efficiently process this increasing
movement has not kept pace with its growth. Indeed, there is an
obvious physical and financial limit to the growth that
Ports-of-Entry to countries can handle. The result has been, in the
opinion of some persons, an easing of the barriers which formally
kept ineligible travelers such as criminals, terrorists, and economic
migrants out of many countries. Last fiscal year at the
Ports-of-Entry to the United States, the 4,000 Immigration Inspectors
intercepted almost 800,000 persons who were ineligible for admission
to the United States. There is no estimate available as to the number
of those who got past them.
How then do we balance the needs of enforcement; the prompt
identification and denial of entry to persons we, as a nation, do not
want to allow into our country, with the needs of facilitation; the
prompt admission of those we want to welcome?
One method the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service
has been experimenting with is the idea of an automated inspection.
That is, the removal of the low-risk, frequent traveler from the
inspection lines and allowing that person, in essence, to inspect
themselves. Historically, each time a person seeks to enter a
country, they must be personally interviewed by a government officer
to determine the purpose of the proposed entry no matter how many
times that person has entered the country before. This has been
necessary because, until recently, it has not been possible to
conclusively identify the traveler except by that face to face
interview. Abraham Lincoln once said that common looking people must
be the best in the world that is the reason the Lord makes so many of
them. The trouble is they are difficult to tell apart, especially if
they have a vested interest in remaining incognito. Biometric
verification provides a potential solution to this problem.
Biometrics can be defined as an automated method of verifying or
recognizing the identity of a living person based upon a
physiological or behavioral characteristic; that is, it's based upon
something we are or something we do.
The word "automated" is necessary in the definition because we want
to avoid the inclusion of very common, but significantly less
reliable, methods of identification such as a photograph. We want to
ensure that our identification is precise and accurate. In addition
to automation, there must be three other components: there must be a
mechanism to scan and capture an image of the characteristic being
observed; there must be some processing of the image; and, there must
be an interface with an application.
Most humans perform recognition by observing a characteristic and
selecting a matching characteristic from a group of stored images.
For example, when we observe a person we look through our brain to
see if we have a memory of the person. If we find a match, we "know"
we have met the person before. This type of search is called a
"one-to-many" search because we are comparing one image to many
others in search of a match.
We now have four kinds of automated inspection projects underway.
INSPASS (Airport); INSPASS (Land); PORTPASS (Dedicated Commuter
Lane); and PORTPASS (Automated Permit Port). The first two use hand
geometry; the last two voice verification since they are designed for
use by people in vehicles. The difference between the last two is
that the Dedicated Commuter Lane also uses a Radio Frequency tag
affixed to the vehicle and gets the biometric as the vehicle is
moving; the Automated Permit Port requires the vehicle to stop - we
also back it up with a "Video Inspection System" that allows an
inspector located at a different Port-of-Entry to video conference
with the driver if the biometric fails to identify the traveler.
All of our automated inspection systems use a "one-to-one" search;
that is we attempt to verify a claimed identity. The person seeking
admission to the United States presents a card which has an
identifying number which corresponds to a record pertaining to an
enrollee. Instead of searching the entire enrollment database, it is
only necessary to go to the specific record pertaining to that
identifying number, obtain the biometric data acquired at the time of
enrollment and compare that to the biometric data now being offered.
The easiest way to understand this is to understand the difference
between "Are you who you claim to be?" instead of "Who are you?"
There are several well-known biometrics in common use: fingerprints,
eye patterns, hand scans, signature dynamics, etc. We are using two
biometrics; hand geometry at the airports and in pedestrian lanes at
land border Ports-of-Entry. We are using voice verification in the
vehicles lanes at land border Ports-of-Entry.
The United States is not the only nation involved in automated
inspection systems. The systems which we are using are matched by the
Canadians with their version of each; except they are using
fingerprints in their version of INSPASS, which they call CANPASS.
Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Holland, Germany, and the United
Kingdom are actively developing automated inspection systems.
Singapore has decided on fingerprints, Australia will be testing
facial recognition in Adelaide this summer, and the other countries
are going to use hand geometry or a combination of hand geometry and
fingerprints.
What is more important, early in the development cycle it became
apparent to us that the potential exists for a traveler's nightmare
to develop. Imagine if every country had an automated inspection
system and none of them were compatible with any other system.
Besides having to remember how to use each system, the traveler might
have to carry a bag of cards, one for each system.
Recognizing this, the Immigration authorities of Australia, Bermuda,
Canada, Germany, Holland, the United Kingdom and the United States
have been working for the last year to develop a standard for
automated inspections. We have come to a preliminary agreement on the
format for an automated inspection card. It is now possible to use,
for example, the Canadian CANPASS card in our INSPASS after enrolling
in both systems.
This development offers the potential to significantly change the way
people travel. Imagine having a single card in your wallet which can
be used to charge your hotel room, access your bank account, make a
phone call, and automate your trip across international borders. Such
a card is not the dream of a futurist; it could be available soon as
the result of a revolutionary proposal the United States Government
is considering. It is based upon a project the Dutch Government
undertook in 1991 with their automated inspection project. Use of
cards by travelers is nothing new; the United States accepts cards
from our Permanent Resident Aliens instead of a passport and most
travelers probably use a credit card when they travel. It was the
Dutch combination of these ideas that was novel: they used a "smart"
card with an electronic record of the bearer's fingerprint stored in
the chip. After using it in their automated inspection system, the
card holder could also use it to pay for airport parking or for a
stay at one of the airport hotels. Eventually, several thousand
people enrolled in the program, at the cost of 100 Dutch Gilders a
year. After two years, the Dutch program ended. A variety of reasons
have been advanced, but the one most commonly heard is that the Dutch
did not want to spend any money to expand the system until the United
States completed its test of INSPASS. There may be some truth to that
explanation as we have now completed the test, developed a production
system, and the Dutch have announced their intention to bring back an
automated inspection system which closely resembles INSPASS.
The partnership the Immigration and Naturalization Service is
considering is based upon three key ideas:
The INS should be the gatekeeper, not the operator, of the system;
The card should contain a variety of technological platforms for
maximum flexibility; and
The card should have a commercial plus a governmental identity.
The idea of the Immigration Service to turn to private industry to
operate an automated inspection system would have been considered
radical, and undoable, just a few years ago. Today it fits in
perfectly with the "reinventing government" strategy which stresses
the development of effective ways to control costs and improve the
delivery of governmental benefits and services. To quote William
Plamondon, Chair of the Facilitation/Reduction of Barriers
subcommittee of the recently completed White House Conference on
Travel and Tourism: ". . . [w]e must draw upon the individual
strengths of the public and private sectors and form a partnership
that will encourage people to come to the United States."
In this idea, the INS would retain its role as the determinator of
who is allowed to participate in the system and would avoid the role
of marketer and producer of cards. Companies that agree to issue
cards and maintain the system would be allowed to include commercial
uses for the card. This could provide the business opportunity that
could justify the expense of advertising the program, making the
cards, and obtaining and maintaining the equipment.
We have included in our design the necessary technological platforms
to ensure that the card will have a useful life of approximately five
years. Most importantly for commercial users today, it will sport the
ubiquitous magnetic stripe which the government will not use, making
it completely available to the commercial sector. We have also
included a microchip in the design as we will require some of the
available storage space for automated inspections. We will make the
remainder of the chip's storage available to our commercial partners.
We think this is especially significant because of the recent
announcement by Visa, MasterCard, and Europay of their joint
specification for chip-based credit cards.
To further the appeal of this idea to the commercial sector, we will
also allow cards prepared by our partners to display the logo of the
partner. This would create in the mind of the card holder an instant
link between our high technology application and the sponsoring
corporation. Just think of the possibilities for a frequent traveler
pulling out a card bearing the IBM or United Airlines logo, for
example. Now potentiate that image by seeing the card as a charge
card, an airline ticket, a medium by which you could access
telecommunications systems, an electronic bank, and/or any other
card-based application you can conceive.
In our opinion, none of this is blue sky thinking. Its power comes
from the linking together in a unique way of already existing ideas.
The technological, commercial, and governmental timing are right, we
think. We hope to begin implementation of these partnerships later
this year.
Any further questions or comments may be addressed to Assistant
Chief Inspector Ronald J. Hays,
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
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