IDEMIA Renews Biometric Partnership With INTERPOL

INTEROL has renewed its biometric matching contract with IDEMIA. The two organizations first started working together in the year 2000, when IDEMIA outfitted INTERPOL with an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). The scope of the partnership would then expand to cover facial recognition in 2016.

IDEMIA will add yet another biometric modality with the latest renewal. The company will provide INTERPOL with a new Multi-Biometric Identification System (MBIS) that supplements faces and fingerprints with new palm print recognition capabilities.

The new MBIS system also comes with an improved user interface and performance upgrades that will make it easier for INTERPOL officers to conduct forensics searches. In that regard, the new system is more accurate than its predecessor, and is robust enough to carry out as many as one million searches on a daily basis.

INTERPOL used IDEMIA’s face and fingerprint systems to identify more than 300 suspects in the US alone. The MBIS will provide police agents in all 194 member states with access to the same biometric database, and will be leveraged for border control applications in addition to criminal investigations.

“Law enforcement must benefit from the latest advances in technology, especially in biometric security, to better combat all forms of transnational crime,” said INTERPOL Operational Support and Analysis Director Cyril Gout. “INTERPOL’s enhanced partnership with IDEMIA will further help our member countries better protect their borders and their citizens.”

“We worked together to capture the specific requirements of the INTERPOL teams to enhance our solutions,” added IDEMIA Public Security and Identity EVP Philippe Barreau. “We’re thrilled to cement our longstanding alliance with INTERPOL who share our purpose to make people’s lives safer around the world.”

In 2019, IDEMIA and INTERPOL hosted a joint Security Document Examination Training session to teach border officials about the technologies that are used to create modern travel documents. The session was set up to make sure those officials would be able to spot forged documents when they turn up in the wild.

–

April 15, 2021 – by Eric Weiss