Would you submit your fingerprints to a database? Don’t dismiss the idea too quickly, says John Woodward, a 21-year veteran of the CIA and Defense Department who specializes in intelligence, counterterrorism, and technology policy. Now a professor of the practice of international relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School for Global Studies, Woodward talked with arts&sciences about how our biometrics could safeguard our security.
Why do you think identifying people by physical characteristics like fingerprints should replace our current ID system?
What is the most commonly requested ID when you go about your daily duties? Your driver’s license. The original purpose of the driver’s license is so you can drive a vehicle legally, but that use has been overshadowed by other demands. You produce your license to buy alcohol, board an airplane, cash a check. We have basically outsourced identity management to each state’s department of motor vehicles. As long as we have a system that relies on a document to establish our identity, we’re going to run the risk of being fooled by someone using an alias. We would be more secure if we standardized identity credentialing to federal and state organizations that would have that as their exclusive mission. It would probably upset quite a few people if the government created identity management bureaus that took mug shots and fingerprints before issuing identity credentials. But it’s not madness to think about a system like that. The US Department of Defense already uses such a system.
A lot of people will think it’s madness. Why would we go along with it—and is there any guarantee the government can protect this information if we hand it over?
Whether the government can protect personal information about its citizens should rightly be a key concern. That said, we should realize that many public and private sector organizations already store our data, and some US government organizations have excellent records of safeguarding it. For example, the FBI securely manages many sensitive databases, including Next Generation Identification, which stores the fingerprints of more than 100 million persons. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government took comprehensive measures to enable better identity credentialing. Biometrics, like computerized fingerprinting, became a major component of the visa process, which has helped reduce visa fraud and improve homeland security. And during the Iraq War in 2003, the US military embarked on a large-scale biometrics-based identity management system that helped identify national security threats, largely through fingerprint and iris matching.
During the presidential campaign, we saw a rise in hostility toward those seeking resettlement. Can biometrics facilitate security without perpetuating fear?
The United States is a nation of immigrants and we should have a spirit that welcomes them, while practicing security vetting. Although the terrorist and criminal risk refugees pose to the US is relatively small, it needs to be addressed. Biometrics build better security in two important ways: First, they can be searched against databases for possible matches of interest, like criminal and terrorist records. Second, fingerprints uniquely link an identity to a name. If it is Ms. A’s first time applying for a US visa, her fingerprints will be searched against the database of all US visa applicants; if she has never previously applied, no match will be made. If she claims never to have applied and her fingerprints match to a previous applicant, that would be cause for heightened scrutiny. When Ms. A gives her fingerprint at the US port of entry, it will match to her identity record, verifying that she is who she claims to be. One of the important things we can do for both our country’s national security and for refugees or asylum seekers immigrating to the US is thorough biometric vetting to assure the American public that these are people we want to come to America.