Chertoff Praises Biometric Fingerprint System, 10 Point Capture is Next

The following are comments about biometric fingerprinting and how is helps homeland security by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff:

Well, I'm delighted to be here[US Visit Industry Day in Arlington, Va.] , and I'd like to thank the various agencies which have representatives in attendance, not only in my own department but the Department of Justice, Department of State, National Institute of Justice, Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. I think it reflects a broad range of agencies that have an interest in this kind of technology as an important ingredient in the way forward in protecting our homeland security.

But as important are our partners from the United Kingdom and European Union reflecting that this is an international challenge and not merely a national challenge, that, in the end, a world in which we are networked through biometrics to increase the security for those who travel and trade is a safer world and one in which we all have a very important investment.

One of the reasons I wanted to come today was to acknowledge the substantial progress that has been made in developing faster, high-quality 10-print capture devices, and also to encourage you to keep working to develop the kind of operationally sound and workable hardware and software that we will need over the next couple of years to meet our objective of implementing 10-print capture at our ports of entry and overseas in our consulates.

This is a moment of great opportunity for all of us, although the individual agencies here have specific needs that may differ. Overall, we have a common necessity. We just need ability to get fast, accurate and high-quality fingerprint capture so that we can run the fingerprints against databases that tell us whether we have a terrorist, a criminal or somebody else whose identity is important to us. Without this capability, our efforts to establish a broad foundation of biometric-based next-generation technology will not, in fact, come into effect.

What do we want to do this for? Well, obviously, to the extent that we have developed a names-based screening system to identify known terrorists and keep them out of the country or keep them, frankly, from traveling around the world, that's been a very positive step forward. But the next challenge is the unknown terrorist, the person who is a threat whose name is not known to us, or the person who is a threat who may come in under a false name. And the tried and true method for identifying the unknown terrorist is the fingerprint. The fingerprint is valuable not only because as far as I know it's never been shown that more than one person has the same set of fingerprints, but because fingerprints leave telltale traces. A latent fingerprint, a fingerprint that is left on the glass or in the training camp or in the safe house is, in fact, a powerful tool for determining who has been in that place or who has handled that object. And as those of you who watch television know, that's a long-term -- or for a long period of time been a staple of not only forensic investigation in the criminal sense, but also forensic investigation in the terrorist sense.

Now we have had some success with two-print capture, and with actually having a two-print system that is workable. And that is, of course, our currently existing U.S.-VISIT system.

What that will let us do, when we get the 10-print capture device, is for any single foreigner who crosses into our borders, get their 10 prints, and run them not only against our existing databases to see whether they have been here before under a different name or whether there is a criminal record in this country or internationally