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Airport security becomes high-tech
(Beaver County Times (PA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 21--Security and biometrics now live hand in glove. With the government's Registered Traveler program expected to be in place by June, biometrics will become more important, not just to those with high-security job clearances, but those who routinely hop on airplanes.
What exactly biometrics are might not be clear to those who haven't had their faces, fingerprints or irises scanned.
Just as a banking card is encoded with passwords and other information specific to the account holder, a Smart Card used by Registered Travelers would have a biometric "signature" encoded. The point of the card is to move frequent fliers through security quickly, but without compromising security. Travelers will pay $80 to $100 for a card, submit personal information, including fingerprints or other biometrics, and in return, be able to zip through security lines, the federal Transportation Security Administration has said.
The program will be in the hands of private companies, not the government, TSA spokeswoman Lara Uselding said, though it will be subjected to federal Privacy Act guidelines. Companies will have to submit plans for collecting and storing information for their customers, and the system they use to verify identities will have to be compatible with other systems in airports around the country. Details of the program still are being ironed out, and travelers interested in obtaining cards are expected to be able to apply in April.
While the field of biometrics moves to the masses, Vijayakumar Bhagavatula, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been working on biometrics and its precursors for 20 years, initially looking for patterns in identifying tanker trucks and other vehicles from aerial photos for the Department of Defense.
Eight years ago, Marios Savvides, an assistant research professor in electrical and computer engineering as well as CMU's multidiscipline CyLab, a program devoted to computer security -- identity theft, viruses and online safety -- started working with robotics but has shifted into the realm of biometrics.
Biometrics, going to Greek roots, means measuring life, Savvides said. First, that means life is present; this is not a puppet, a mask or a dead person being presented to the computer scanner, but something that gives off heat and has blood flow.
Measuring life can take many shapes. For instance, the famous National Geographic cover of the green-eyed Afghan girl, reshot 17 years after the original, could have used an iris scan to prove the woman was one and the same.
An iris scan does not focus on the color or even the size of the eye, Bhagavatula said, but checks the patterns of blood vessels in the eye. These change little, if at all, over a lifetime, Savvides said. Like a thumbprint, the left is different from the right. Physical characteristics are most commonly used as biometric checks, Bhagavatula said: face prints, fingerprints, iris scans. But biometrics also could mean a retinal scan of the back of the eye, the shape of the ears, speech patterns, voiceprints, gait, even keyboard dynamics -- any physical, physiological or learned behavior. "I would type my name faster than anyone else," Bhagavatula explained.
Sure, there is room for error.
"Nothing is 100 percent unique," Bhagavatula said. "Some part of your fingerprint may match with someone else. To be completely sure these measures are unique, we would have to check the 6 billion people in the world."
So biometric identification involves a system of checking and cross checking -- all done in seconds.
A technical challenge? Perhaps. Too much of a challenge? The people coming into the Registered Traveler program are volunteers, Bhagavatula said. They're willing to cooperate -- which means they would be willing to stand in a specially lit booth or submit their fingers to scanners.
Even in cooperative situations, a single fingerprint, usually stable data, could be hard to match from farmers or others who work with their hands. Scars also can present a challenge.
"That's why no single biometric is the answer," Bhagavatula said. "In all of them, the main challenge is to be able to recognize it's you," he said, despite poor lighting, a change in makeup or a fingerprint covered in greasy hand lotion.
Any biometric system could have false rejects, denying a legitimate person, and false acceptance, admitting a phony. Typically, these amount to about 1 percent in most systems, Bhagavatula said. In a cooperative scenario, like the Registered Traveler program, that error rate drops to about 0.1 percent.
"The goal," Bhagavatula said, "is to keep those numbers down. The research we're doing here improved all of these."
The professors' Department of Homeland Security research is not conducted in a traditional science-class lab setting. The door of the office where Savvides and his doctoral assistant, Ramzi Abiantun, work has a demonstration of their biometric access research. A flat-screen monitor is topped by an off-the-shelf webcam with a fingerprint scanner about the size of a doorbell next to it. The image of anyone entering is captured on the monitor. A red box pops up around the person's face, showing that the computer has recognized it. Then blue rectangles appear on the screen, isolating the person's eyes, like a pair of funky, 3-D sunglasses.
"Please place left thumb on sensor," the womanly computer voice instructs. If it's a match, you gain access. If not, access denied. Beyond the door, the room is decorated in classic workaholic style, with algorithmic formulas scrawled over the entire white board. A couple of high-energy drinks stand ready on the desk, with one lonely bottle of Sprite, and a centerpiece 3-pound, 4-ounce can of peanuts.
Besides half-a-dozen desktops, they work with a couple of laptops and enough cable cords, strung end to end, to reach from Phipps Conservatory to Pitt's Cathedral of Learning, which is towering over the view outside the window. A vertical track with a camera that adjusts automatically to a person's height is part of the operations.
The team has just finished shipping an entire hard drive to the National Institute of Standards and Technology because the program was too bulky for CDs and DVDs. It was the result of nearly nine months of work on a face recognition program and a researcher's delight known as "the iris challenge." By the time the government team pores over the work, perhaps a year will have passed.
Their work in biometrics doesn't have applications only in the Registered Traveler program and airports, but in granting access to secure areas, or secure computers -- even personal cell phones. Most phones already are equipped with a digital camera and microphone; some have fingerprint sensors. They require face recognition, voice recognition or the fingerprint scan to grant access to the increasing amounts of data kept on mobile devices.
It's no Star Trek fantasy for Bhagavatula. With cell phones, he said, "We are there."
"Biometrics is not just catching bad guys at the airport," Bhagavatula said. "It has a lot of potential."
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