Bureau Beefs Up Biometrics Capabilities

Signal, Sep 2008 by Lawlor, Maryann

Expanding its identification verification toolkit is only one aspect of the NGI program. Bush allows that the future also holds expansion in cooperation between organizations as well. "The next level after this is integrating more with the intelligence community and then the international community.

We're getting our act together pretty well in the United States, but these other foreign entities want access to the bad-guy stuff too-and we want access to their bad-guy stuff. We've always had a lot of bilateral agreements. 'Send a print over, fax a print over and take a look at this to see if you've ever seen this guy before.' But we need to come up with something that's more secure, that protects privacy of individuals, that meets all the datasharing laws that are out there. There's a great deal of interest, and I think a great deal of need to do that in a real-time, efficient manner," Bush says.