Border Security System's Limits Assailed

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border17aug17.story
THE NATION
Border Security System's Limits Assailed
Lawmaker questions the effectiveness of program built on databases that are not fully compatible.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Times Staff Writer

August 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — A new government computer program that tries to identify terrorists and criminals from among millions of foreign visitors was built from antiquated components that cannot easily exchange information, limiting its effectiveness in the war on terrorism, a senior Democratic lawmaker charged Monday.

"You are going down a dead-end road here, and sooner or later, it is going to be apparent," said Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

At issue is US-VISIT, a program launched in January by the Department of Homeland Security and hailed at the time as the most significant advance in immigration enforcement in decades. The name stands for U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology. Now deployed at airports and seaports, it will be phased in at major land border crossings late this year.

The system uses two digital fingerprints and a photo to verify the identity of an arriving traveler as it conducts an instantaneous background check.<snip>

But Turner said an investigation by his staff showed that the technology had been grafted onto old immigration databases not fully compatible with either the FBI's massive fingerprint library or the State Department's database of people seeking to travel to the United States.<snip>