U.S. Biometrics Standards Registry Issued for Public Comment

February 26, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

Public comments on the draft are needed by March 10.

Biometrics involve identifying individuals by unique characteristics, such as fingerprints, faces, irises and palms.

Experts said 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 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 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 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in war zones are also useable by U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) 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.

Membership on the subcommittee charged with drafting the standards registry included representatives from 15 different U.S. government departments and agencies. The NSTC Committee on Technology (COT) first established the subcommittee in 2002.

Specific sections of the registry recommend:

• Standards for data collection, storage and exchange.
• Transmission profiles.
• Requirements for identifying government employees and contractors.
• "Plug and play" equipment standards.
• Conformance and performance testing methodology standards.
• References.

Vendors of biometric technologies, biometric researchers, law enforcement officials or others can 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.

The standards registry is available at www.biometrics.gov/standards.

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).