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When Coast Guard cutters intercept the thousands of people trying to enter the United States illegally each year, ship personnel collect and transmit biometric data on those individuals to check them against a Homeland Security Department database.

However, a recent audit by the DHS inspector general found that the Coast Guard does not consistently reconcile the data it collects through its Biometrics At Sea System, or BASS, with what it provides to DHS's Automated Biometric Identification System, or IDENT.

"Specifically, USCG did not maintain an independent, aggregate count of the total number of biometrics sent to IDENT and did not perform routine reconciliations to validate that the biometric data posted to IDENT were reasonably complete," according to the audit (pdf) dated March 3 and released to the public March 12.

In other words, the Coast Guard doesn't regularly compare the total number of all biometrics that all 23 cutters send to IDENT to the number that the DHS system reports as having received and recorded in its database. For example, DHS's Office of Biometric Identity Management, which maintains IDENT, originally reported to the IG that the system contained more than 4,600 BASS transactions from October 2006 through May 2013. Later, it provided a report prepared by the Coast Guard that the transactions totaled more than 5,100 transactions, representing about a 10-percent discrepancy. Coast Guard officials attributed the discrepancy to a system error at the beginning of the BASS program.

Reconciliations are important because agencies can then "ensure the integrity, accuracy, and completeness of data" and fix any issues that are spotted, the audit said.

Without routine reconciliation, the IG said that the Coast Guard and other agencies cannot properly identify whether the individuals who were intercepted are known or suspected terrorists, felons or those who were previously ordered to be deported or had been deported.

When using BASS, Coast Guard personnel use handheld devices to collect fingerprints and capture a facial image, which are downloaded to a dedicated laptop. They also enter biographic information about the individual. The laptop exports the records to an external hard drive, which is transferred to a networked workstation and emailed to IDENT.

The IDENT system automatically compares the biometrics sent by the Coast Guard and sends a "match or no match response," which confirms as a confirmation that the DHS system has received the record. And if there is no match, then a new record is created in the system. If there is a problem with the record, then the Coast Guard is instructed to fix the issue such as retaking an individual's fingerprint.

The IG said there's some confusion regarding who owns the biometrics information sent from the cutters. Coast Guard officials told the IG that they didn't own it "and had no further responsibility after the biometric information left the cutters," although later they acknowledged ownership of it.

While there were other issues that the audit pointed out as well, the IG recommended that the Coast Guard's chief information officer establish a system to verify biometric transactions sent from the 23 cutters as well as conduct periodic reconciliations with IDENT.

The Coast Guard agreed with the findings and recommendations in the report and is taking steps to resolve the issues, the IG added.

For more:

  • read the DHS IG report on Coast Guard (pdf)

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Autor(en)/Author(s): Dibya Sarkar

Quelle/Source: Fierce Homeland Security, 16.03.2015

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