Facial Recognition Technology: CBP’s new Traveler Identity Verification

With an urgent need for the deployment of a new biometric and biographic authenticator at the borders, US officials in departments such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) decided to use a Facial Recognition Technology over their Manual ID or Document Verification techniques. This blog discusses why such a sizeable change was needed to their traveller’s identity verification system and what makes this biometric authentication solution more robust and convenient for facilitating legitimate travel and document verification.

How does Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) work and why was it used? 

The US federal law in question requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to enforce a biographic and biometric data verification system for foreign nationals entering and exiting the U.S borders. As a response, CBP took charge by implementing facial recognition technology (FRT) to verify a traveller’s identity by taking a picture and cross-verifying it with existing databases to confirm the identity of the traveller. This new Verification system replaced the older visual inspection of travel identification documents, which were performed manually that had no way of confirming the legitimacy of the document. 

How does FRT work? 

Facial Recognition Technology is a broad term given to a system that verifies identities via face-matching the facial features with an existing image or facial data plots.

The process itself is very simple and the following steps are followed in a usual biometric identity verification process : 

1. A camera is pointed at the traveller/user’s face in well-lit conditions to capture an image
2. The image is then uploaded into a secure server within seconds to process the user’s facial image for verification
3. AI based technology is involved in Biometric Verification analyses and maps out distinguishable facial features
4. The verification model verifies the identity of the traveller by mapping the user’s facial image to government IDs or set databases
5. The model is allowed to access international identity databases and the user is found.
6. Once the user data and identity is verified, alert systems are enabled in case of black-listed travellers/documents
7. A genuine traveller receives a green signal to go forward and continue the journey.

The whole process is carried out by a complex system that can complete all these tasks in just a few seconds to authenticate the biometric identity of the traveller.

What are the benefits of FRT over manual checks?

Digital Identity verification systems such as biometric authenticators and document verification have game-changing advantages over traditional visual inspection techniques of travellers and their documents. The key reasons why CBP adapted to newer digital verification techniques are:

• Saves effort & time spent on comparing information
• Provides real-time alerts on results of Face Match
• Automated and instant approvals for genuine travellers
• Enhances customer experience through faster processing of ID and Documents
• Detects Identity Fraud and Criminals with Fake IDs
• Improves operational efficiency by removing mundane work of verifying authentic customers
• AI enabled Face Trace technology helps combat fraud through high verification accuracy

These advancements in both verification technology, as well as the traveller’s convenience of quick verifications without fumbling to hand over physical documents, made facial recognition tech an optimistic upgrade over the old system. 

How does new Identity Verification Technology facilitate legitimate travel and document verification?

With the Face ID verification techniques discussed above, facilitating legitimate travel should be more streamlined than ever. The documents associated with such an ID verification method are usually fetched over the air from saved databased extracted based on the traveller’s facial photograph. Alternatively, more stringent systems use an OCR based solution that directly reads document text, logos, signatures and other content to cross-verify the authenticity of the ID from saved databases or government repositories. Here is how traveller identity and documents are verified to facilitate legitimate travel:

How does Document Verification work?

In a nutshell, Document Verification performs the same visual checks as a person would on-site, as in reading through the name, address, expiry date and other details on the ID, inspecting if the ID has been tampered with in any way and finally cross-verify with the person producing the ID to match the face. But Document Verification with AI based solutions is much faster, that it takes just seconds and is more detailed in verifying the document of the traveller. Here are a few key areas where 

Documents Verification over the air excels in practice:

• Automate information extraction
• Classify, and validate documents against government databases with high precision
• Recognizes low-quality images, rotated images, and any format, and delivers high accuracy without errors
• Online document verification technology for instant verification
• Intelligent extraction of relevant details without manual intervention
• Capture related customer information from authorized sources
• Augment customer data from other sources to increase accuracy
• Allows integration of robust security protocols to Mitigate fraud instances 

How IDcentral Solutions can help?

IDcentral provides top-of-the-line Identity Verification and Document Verification Solutions powered by AI based Technology. The game-changing features include:

• Automates manual data entry
• Faster data processing
• Not prone to human errors
• Cloud storage makes the sharing of data easy
• Increases productivity, reduces the time
• Cost-efficient
• Promotes data security and stability
• Avoid privacy concerns with encrypted user data
• Enable document masking for secured transfer and verification

Effortless verification solutions are what companies are looking for. As mentioned above, IDcentral’s OCR technology substantially reduces the verification time and the direct input from the end-user which otherwise is very daunting because who likes to fill lengthy forms?? Nobody!

All your customers need to do is, scan a picture of their national ID and they are good to go!!

Try IDcentral’s Identity Verification and Document verification solution.

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