As you may know, the Director of the Biometrics Task Force is the Executive Manager of Biometrics for the Department of Defense, which means that the BTF helps to enable biometrics across the enterprise for the DoD.  As such, our scope in the BTF goes far beyond the boundaries of the warfighters and their areas of operation.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24, signed in 2008 and revalidated in 2009 by the current administration, mandates that interoperability with respect to biometrics spans the military, civil, and criminal arenas.  The BTF is engaged in advancing this interoperability in its purest form of biometric-enabled identity management to ensure the safety of America’s sons and daughters in any sand box they happen to find themselves.

In this issue of The Scan, our focus is on the broader biometric picture.  Our lead story highlights collaboration with local law enforcement.  Members of Northern Virginia Law Enforcement were recently invited to and participated in a Biometrics-Focused Exercise (BFX) dealing with emerging biometric equipment testing and data sharing.  Northern Virginia Regional Identification System (NOVARIS) officials were able to share their experiences and information on their local biometrics repository, as well as gain from BTF experiences.  There is an ongoing attempt to cross a gap to reach local law enforcement partners of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), as well, so that these players get confirmed feedback of a positive biometric match.  We also feature a story on collaboration with the Canadian Director of National Defense (DND), who has a key role in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition in Afghanistan and our attendance at its first biometric conference.

Biometrics efforts are advancing, and the BTF continues to stay on the cutting edge of leading technologies.  The BTF Concept & Technologies Branch announces this year’s winners of our Biometric Technical Demonstration and Biometric Broad Agency Announcement project awardees, which feature many multimodal projects.  We have also added a fun feature in this issue that provides a technical critique of biometrics on the silver screen as we take a look at three movies that feature biometrics.

Finally, our Q&A section deals directly with privacy measures that the BTF employs and the importance we place on safeguarding individual identities of both U.S. and non-U.S. persons.

I hope you enjoy this issue as we all celebrate the Independence and security of which biometrics has become a large part.

CDR Tyson Schaedel, USN
Acting Military Deputy
Biometrics Task Force