{"id":63476,"date":"2026-04-21T15:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/?p=63476"},"modified":"2026-04-21T15:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:36:26","slug":"woodward-talks-about-biometrics-in-defense-to-harvard-universitys-sts-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/2026\/04\/21\/woodward-talks-about-biometrics-in-defense-to-harvard-universitys-sts-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodward Talks About Biometrics in Defense to Harvard University&#8217;s STS Circle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On April 13, 2026, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/profile\/john-woodward\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Professor John D. Woodward Jr.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> delivered a keynote presentation: <\/span><b>Biometrics in the U.S. Department of Defense: From an Abstract Idea to Identity Intelligence<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the members of Harvard University&#8217;s Science, Technology, &amp; Society (STS) Circle. The event was hosted by Professor Sheila Jasanoff, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_63105\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-63105\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2026-02-26-at-4.38.28\u202fPM-300x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"wp-image-63105 size-medium\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2026-02-26-at-4.38.28\u202fPM-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2026-02-26-at-4.38.28\u202fPM-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2026-02-26-at-4.38.28\u202fPM-100x100.png 100w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/files\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2026-02-26-at-4.38.28\u202fPM.png 475w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-63105\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Professor John D. Woodward Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Woodward drew from his experiences as the director of the Department of Defense (DoD) Biometrics from 2003 to 2005. He explained how the terrorist attacks of September 11 and subsequent armed conflicts greatly incentivized the DoD to leverage biometrics, or the automated use of physical characteristics and physiological traits for purposes of human recognition, to help identify national security threats.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the presentation, Woodward detailed the history of\u00a0 DoD biometrics that was conceived as an abstract idea in the late 1990s. It then went on to gain robust wartime implementation in 2003 with the development of DoD\u2019s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and the collection of hundreds of thousands of fingerprints.\u00a0 From this global deployment, DoD intelligence policymakers formally recognized biometrics as a formal intelligence collection modality by 2013, with Identity Intelligence (IDINT) enshrined in official doctrine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/profile\/john-woodward\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">John D. Woodward, Jr.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is the Professor of the Practice of International Relations at Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. A former CIA officer, he has served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology. Woodward, Jr. is a published author and has contributed to prominent news outlets such as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wall Street Journal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Washington Post<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Globe<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On April 13, 2026, Professor John D. Woodward Jr. delivered a keynote presentation: Biometrics in the U.S. Department of Defense: From an Abstract Idea to Identity Intelligence to the members of Harvard University&#8217;s Science, Technology, &amp; Society (STS) Circle. The event was hosted by Professor Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24850,"featured_media":63105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11797],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63618,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63476\/revisions\/63618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}