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The Department of Homeland Security is moving to strengthen it Face recognition And others Biometric technologies In one system is able to compare faces, fingerprints, iris scans and other identifiers collected across its enforcement agencies, according to records reviewed by WIRED.
The agency is asking private biometrics contractors how to build a unified platform that allows employees to search for faces and fingerprints across large government databases already filled with biometrics collected in different contexts. The goal is to connect components including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, USCIS, the Secret Service, and DHS headquarters, replacing a patchwork of tools that don’t easily share data.
The system will support watchlisting, detention, or removal processes and comes like the Department of Homeland Security Pushing biometric surveillance beyond ports of entry And in the hands Intelligence units and Masked agents It operates hundreds of miles from the border.
Records show that DHS is trying to procure a single “matching engine” that could take different types of biometrics — faces, fingerprints, iris scans and more — and run them through the same backend, giving multiple DHS agencies one common system. In theory, this means the platform will handle both identity verifications and investigative searches.
For face recognition specifically, identity verification means that the system compares one image to one stored record and returns a yes or no answer based on similarity. For investigations, it searches a large database and returns a ranked list of closest-looking faces for a human to review rather than independently making a call.
Both types come from searches With real artistic limits. In identity verification processes, systems are more sensitive and therefore less likely to incorrectly flag an innocent person. However, they will fail to identify a match when the image provided is slightly blurry, angled, or old. For survey searches, the threshold is much lower, and while the system is more likely to list the right person somewhere in the results, it also produces many false positives that require human review.
The documents make clear that DHS wants to control how stringent or lenient compliance is — depending on the context.
The department also wants to connect the system directly to existing infrastructure. Contractors are expected to connect the matching device to existing biometric sensors, recording systems, and data warehouses so that information collected in one DHS component can be searched against records maintained by another.
It is unclear how applicable this is. Different DHS agencies have purchased their biometric systems from different companies over many years. Each system converts your face or fingerprint into a string of numbers, but many are only designed to work with the specific software that created them.
In practical terms, this means that a new department-level search tool cannot simply “flip a switch” and make everything compatible. DHS will likely have to convert old records to a common format, rebuild them using a new algorithm, or create software bridges that translate between systems. All of these methods take time and money, and each can impact speed and accuracy.
At the scale DHS proposes — potentially billions of records — even small compliance gaps could turn into big problems.
The documents also contain a placeholder indicating DHS wants to incorporate voiceprint analysis, but do not contain detailed plans for how they will be collected, stored or searched. The agency previously used voiceprints in its “Alternative to Detention” program, which allowed migrants to remain in their communities but required them to undergo extensive monitoring, including GPS ankle trackers and routine checks that confirmed their identity using biometric voiceprints.