DHS Offers Licenses for Two Patented Biometric Screening Systems

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking commercial licensees for two patented biometric systems it developed in-house. One identifies travellers whose names or birthdates cannot be matched cleanly; the other measures how well a biometric collection station is actually working.

The Biometric Identity Disambiguation system, listed in DHS’s publication library this week, was created by researchers at the Science and Technology Directorate and the Transportation Security Administration. It addresses a recurring screening problem: common first and last names, birthdays shared by multiple people, and input errors including misspellings, nicknames and transposed digits in a date of birth. Where those collide, verification stalls, extending screening time and creating bottlenecks for staff and travellers.

The system is credited to inventors Daniel Boyd and Arun Vemury and covered by three US patents, 11,531,737, 11,127,013 and 11,392,951.

The second system, the Biometric Data Collection and Verification System, comes from the directorate’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center and is credited to Vemury, covered by patents 10,817,738, 10,885,364 and 11,144,773. Rather than matching faces, it receives and measures data from a biometric collection station and produces a characterisation number quantifying performance across four dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction and equitability. That figure is compared against required performance criteria to confirm a station is working as specified and to flag deficiencies needing remediation.

DHS lists the shortfalls the system is meant to expose: slow data acquisition and retrieval, failures in biometric data extraction, and inaccuracies in matching, which it says reduce screening throughput and erode user trust. Equitability is the agency’s own term, and demographic performance is the same question the Information Commissioner’s Office raised this week in 107 recommendations to police forces in England and Wales.

Both are classified as proven systems in the transportation security category, and both are listed under partnerships sought as license, with the agency’s technology transfer office as the contact point. The department has separately been shopping for capability rather than selling it, issuing a request for an enterprise-wide biometric matching software solution covering identity verification, vetting and investigative functions.

Vemury’s centre has run much of the department’s independent evaluation work, including the biometric technology rallies that test commercial systems against live volunteers. TSA has continued extending face verification, having expanded facial recognition to 80 US airports with a nationwide rollout planned.

Sources: Homeland Security, FedScoop

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team