Northrop Grumman is developing a biometric intelligence system to help U.S. troops keep tabs on suspected terrorists and insurgents. The system, which identifies people by their fingerprints, iris patterns or other biological metrics, is meant to meet a need identified by U.S. forces in Iraq.
On February 5, 2006, soldiers from the Texas-based 4th Infantry Division, deployed to north-central Iraq since the previous fall, sortied from their base to set up checkpoints outside the town of Balad. The town was so bad that the Iraqi army had sent one of its crack Kurdish units, normally based in the peaceful north of the country, into an outpost downtown. But snipers had kept the Kurdish troops from even leaving the base. Balad was desperately in need of some spring cleaning.
But standing at their checkpoint on a road outside Balad, the soldiers realized they lacked the necessary tools. Army intelligence had provided them with a list including names, descriptions and in some cases outdated photos of known bad guys. The soldiers carried fuzzy color copies of the list in their pockets and compared every passerby to the descriptions. But the photos too grainy and the descriptions too vague: pretty much every Iraqi man has a moustache, black hair and brown eyes. As for names? Besides sharing a small number of popular surnames, Iraqis have a habit of tacking their fathers and grandfathers name onto their own or even going by nicknames that dont match their photo IDs at all, assuming they even have photo IDs. There was just no way for the American soldiers to reliably know if they had happened to ensnare a bad guy in their net. And on that February afternoon, they returned to base empty-handed and frustrated.
Stinging from failures like those in Balad last year, in January the Army gave Los Angeles-based defense firm Northrop Grumman $20 million to develop a biometric solution. The idea, says Northrop Grumman vice president Larry Schneider, is to ingest disparate sources of military information worldwide, to establish a central repository that can be queried. So if someone shows up at one place and says his name is one thing, then shows up somewhere else saying his name is another thing, that can be identified and can be passed back to tactical land forces.
Soldiers might register detainees biometrics using a portable scanner. That info, combined with a brief history of the suspect, would be fed into a central database back in the States and analyzed by algorithms endlessly searching for connections between suspects. If, during a future operation, the soldiers happen across any of the same suspects as before, the system would alert them. Over time, the system might accumulate enough data on suspects movements to begin drawing conclusions about behavior patterns, allowing intelligence agents to predict suspects activities and, if necessary, thwart them.
People talk about how were disadvantaged in asymmetric warfare, Schneider says, using the militarys favorite term for big industrial armies fighting elusive, low-tech insurgents and terrorists. Biometrics, he adds, are an example of how our technology advantages us.
Unless their initial enrollment data is acquired in a controlled environment, the efficacy of this project is definitely questionable. Compare how soldiers are acquiring this data versus, say, the DMV; the latter will ensure that the subject leaves high quality fingerprints, iris, etc. I doubt the soldiers in the field have that luxury. The result? Your devices will be comparing crap fingerprint to crap fingerprint. Not really helpful.
Several posters here know not whereof they speak. The big kahuna in the Biometric space is L-1 Identity Solutions (ID) and it is teamed with Northrup with an already existing ruggedized hand held biometric ‘machine’ that takes fingers, face and iris all in one. Northrup is building the data base part. These already exist in theatre in Afghanistan and Iraq. Looking at 2+ million records at this time. Suggest you go and do some DD before you spout off about how long it will take, etc.
From their recent quarterly—HIIDE is the handheld and Super HIIDE is also nearly ready for deployment.
“The annual revenue growth of 13 percent reflects growth in the U.S. passport business; facial recognition solutions; enrollment services for state, local and federal customers; multi-modal mobile biometric devices (HIIDE); and counter-terrorism services of approximately 25 percent. This growth was partially offset by delays in live scan awards, along with certain software opportunities which were booked in the 2006 fourth quarter, but will not be reflected in revenue until 2007.“
Best,
Paul
on the downside “bad guys” could profit from this technology too, it would make ethnic cleansing so much easier…
Iraq!? Hell, we need this at airport security posts in the States. The whole idea of using a no-fly list with NAMES on it for Christs sake to identify potentially dangerous people is ludicrous.
Every face that comes close to security screen should be automatically scanned off a high resolution video camera and biometric points on the face measured and compared to a database.
Such a system should be installed at every sensitive site.
Is it just me, or does it look like the new camo on that soldier is two different colors. The body armor looks darker then the cloths. Did the Army decide to change the tones of there new camo? Anyone know?
came across a niffy little hand held device at a spec ops show last week in DC
IP67, Mil810, US made and assembled, Military Wireless, face, finger, Iris, nice screen.
http://www.mobid-hbc.com
Now where would one collect the sample to authenticate data against the biometric identifier? Imagine the mobile checkpoints with hundreds of different faces passing thru them.