TSA biometric security fails 1 in 50 transport workers' credentials

A Lockheed Martin official told a maritime security conference that the current biometric security system for shipping workers implemented in the wake of 9/11, fails to match users with their thumbprints 2% of the time.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - The director of credentialing technology for US government contractor Lockheed Martin, Jon Rambeau, told attendees of a maritime security conference here today that fingerprint biometric security systems currently used in the Transportation Security Administration's Transport Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program fail to properly authorize enrollees' credentials one time in 50.

The TWIC program issues tamper-resistant smart cards to personnel who work in maritime facilities and on maritime vessels ("mariners"), enabling them unescorted access to those areas with auditable, secure authentication. Identifying data on the smart card is matched against fingerprint data assessed at the time the card is read.

Rambeau's admission was that systems currently in use fail to match fingerprint data to smart card data 2% of the time. The moderator of the conference where Rambeau made his presentation today, TWIC program director Maurine Fangey, responded to Rambeau's admission by saying her group is willing to consider alternative biometric systems, but the Dept. of Homeland Security -- the TSA's parent agency -- would have to meet first with the National Institute of Science and Technology, to determine what new systems they could deploy that could utilize data that is backwards-compatible with the database TWIC currently uses.

The TWIC system only began enrollments in Wilmington, Delaware, six weeks ago. Just last October 30, Fangey reported to a Congressional committee that testing of the system had already been completed, and that all selected components, including the biometric system, had passed.

"TWIC will be one of the world's most advanced, interoperable biometric credentialing programs," Fangey told the House Homeland Security Committee, "and is powered by state-of-the-art technologies.

"We have completed our 'flight test' of the full TWIC system," she continued, one of whose five components "captures a worker's biometric and biographic information and submits the information for security processing...After our contractor verified system readiness, TSA completed independent verification before beginning final test enrollments in the field using live vetting on government and trusted contractor personnel."

In Fangey's written testimony submitted to Congress, she stated one of her program's goals is to "place the highest value in stakeholder input; it is time well spent." Today, she received an earful of stakeholder input.