TSA Scientists: Biometrics Advancements Require Legislation, Standards

Transportation Security Administration officials warned that legislation and standards must keep pace with the rapid advancement of biometrics as the technology helps the agency secure U.S. borders and commercial air travel.

Facial recognition is plentiful. Nearly every smartphone uses it. That’s a massive change over the past ten years and the technologies collecting that data has advanced significantly, especially with the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning models, said Yevgeniy Sirotin, technical director of the Identity and Data Sciences Lab at The Maryland Test Facility.

“We’ve seen reductions in error rates of about … tenfold or more in some systems,” said Sirotin at Identity Week America 2024.

A Closer Look at the Innovations Tackling Frontline Challenges

The advancement of facial biometric technology has impressed both civilians and federal agents. Each year, smaller components of the technology improve, according to Joel Brogan, the lead researcher of multimodal sensor analytics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In 2017, Brogan’s team wrote a paper on how bad actors use 3D models to create faces or masks to trick facial recognition algorithms.

This type of research contributed to current standards. Matt Lightner, acting chief division chief at U.S. Border Patrol, said innovation has led to the safety of officers near the border. With the use of iris recognition technology, agents can ensure identities match without fingerprints.

“When you send the iris [capture] in, and the fingerprint does not match, but the iris hits, then [it’s passed to] a manual review, and those examiners have to compare the fingerprints and determine if this is the same individual,” Lightner said. “Yearly, we get thousands upon thousands of manual overrides through iris recognition.”

Ensuring Public Trust, Transparency

Agencies are working to stay ahead of privacy and ethics concerns around biometrics. Arun Vemury, director of the Biometric and Identity Technology Center, said transparency is critical.

“We need to make sure we can do some public reporting so that people understand and have greater confidence in how the data is being handled, not only by government but by the private sector as well,” Vemury said.

He added that sharing biometric data needs to have limits to ensure applications of biometric data are being integrated correctly.

“In order to move forward and to help progress the technology to kind of achieve the benefits we’re all seeking, we need to be able to be transparent with how the technology works, how well it works, what happens when there are errors, where does the data go,” Vemury said.

Along with transparency, informed or meaningful consent is a cornerstone of ethical biometric data usage. Marianne Diaz Hernandez, campaign lead at Access Now, advocated for alternatives for people who choose to opt out of facial recognition technology. A few airports across the country use facial reconigition for quick security screenings, and travelers have the option to opt-out.

“We need to create an ecosystem where people are able to opt in or opt out, depending on the system, and to feel comfortable enough to trust that their data is going to be used for the specific purpose,” Diaz Hernandez said. “They [also need to know] they can withdraw that information and that they are safe providing it’s not going to be used for surveillance.”

The Role of Legislation in the Ethical Biometrics

Researchers hope to see best practices, standards and national legislation established alongside biometric advancements. Diaz Hernandez said Congress needs to provide unique legislation because biometric data is different from other types of data.

“We need to start making a differentiation,” Diaz Hernandez said. “There is a responsibility in [legislation] for making up a framework before something happens.”

Legislation, industry and academia will need to work together to prevent the use of defective algorithms. John Howard, Chief Data Scientist at the Maryland Test Facility, said different sectors collect data in different ways, which will determine the level of accountability they need to uphold. Howard also said the research community can improve their research maturity practices.