U.S. Border Security at a Crossroads

Not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, to assess the state of INS's technology programs. Fine told Congress he questioned close to $3 billion worth of projects, saying that his review "revealed significant problems that leave gaps in the INS's attempts to secure the nation's borders." At about the same time, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, came to a similar conclusion about the INS technology.

Today, some of the same officials who were in charge of that flawed technology are in key positions at the US-VISIT program.

One of the programs targeted for criticism was a computer network known as IDENT, which requires travelers to submit prints of both index fingers at U.S. consulates and embassies overseas. IDENT then collects two index fingerprints from those visitors at the U.S. border and matches them against a database to determine whether they are allowed into the country.

Fine's auditors concluded that the system was flawed because it did not effectively link to such fingerprint databases as FBI files or government terrorist watch lists that rely on state-of-the-art, 10-fingerprint systems.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, under congressional mandate to develop biometric standards for screening foreign visitors, recommended the government use 10 fingerprints. Using all 10 prints provides better matching capabilities and interoperability with other databases, the scientists said in their 2003 report.

US-VISIT officials did not heed the scientists' advice. Officials later told Congress they relied on the old fingerprint technology as a stopgap while they overhauled the entire border-security system. They promised to upgrade the two-fingerprint IDENT system.

Last fall, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said authorities had made improvements to the IDENT system so it could communicate more effectively with the FBI's database.

IDENT has fingerprints on 15,000 suspected terrorists and their alleged associates and about 1 million known criminals or deportees overall; the FBI keeps fingerprint records on 47 million people.

"Before, we had a flashlight, and we were only able to see into small areas with IDENT," Bonner said at a press conference on Oct. 7, 2004. By integrating with the FBI system, Bonner said, "we've turned on the overhead, and we can see it all."

But the government's own studies show IDENT is not fully integrated with the FBI system. One study by the Justice Department's inspector general's office, released three months after Bonner's remarks, concluded that progress toward making IDENT fully interoperable with other systems, including the FBI's, has "stalled."

The technology's limits and the government's desire to avoid long delays curbs the number of people who can be thoroughly screened. This year, homeland security officials expect to check about 800 people out of the roughly 118,000 visitors a day who should be screened against the FBI database, the Justice Department's inspector general said.

"The lack of immediate access to the FBI's full criminal master file creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected," the inspector general found.