Senior federal IT policy officials are facing a technology choice that also has set off fireworks in Congress: Should Uncle Sam accept digital photographs, as well as smart chips, as biometric identifiers in foreign passports?
The question is critical because it could govern whether Congress grants foreign countries a second extension of the requirement to certify that they have launched biometric passport programs.
If legislation, technology evaluation and diplomacy can’t solve the problem, the State Department and the foreign ministries of 27 Visa Waiver Program countries may be forced to process visa requests from tens of millions of travelers who formerly traveled without visas, thereby tangling tourism and trade.
Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Kim Weissman said that the question of whether DHS would accept digital photographs as biometric identifiers for citizens of visa waiver countries is “still under review.”
The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 mandated that Visa Waiver Program countries establish biometric passport programs by Oct. 26, 2004. Congress extended that deadline last year at the request of secretary of State Colin Powell, who testified that the countries couldn’t meet the original deadline.
Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), author of the 2002 act, has said the law does not require a chip, but calls only for a biometric identifier—which could be a digital photograph.
The Bush administration is widely expected to ask Congress to extend the Oct. 26 deadline for an additional year because many countries still haven’t complied with the law.
Elaine Dezenski, the Homeland Security Department’s acting assistant secretary for policy and planning in the Border and Transportation Security Directorate, recently told law-makers that DHS secretary Michael Chertoff planned to meet with Sensenbrenner in the next few weeks to discuss passport policy.
Whatever route the foreign countries take to provide their citizens with biometric passports, DHS won’t be ready to check the biometric features of the documents at border crossings by October.
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