Prepared by: richard hung Index:

Date: May 30, 2002 DOC Library: goa!3

Hob Code:460525 DOC Number: 188030

State Consular Systems

Reviewed by:
Review Date:

Record of Interview

Purpose Discuss State's Consular Systems used for the issuance of passports and
visas and their pilot of facial recognition.

Contact Method Interview

Contact Place State Department - Columbia Plaza

2401 E Street, NW
Washington, DC

Contact Date May 29, 20021

Participants State Department""

Travis Farris, Director, Consular Systems
John Atkins
AlanDahl

GAP
Richard Hung, ARM/CTE
Tracy Pierson, IT

Comments/Remarks State officials presented a briefing (attached) of their Consular Systems.

At the more than 220 consular posts, they have six primary systems to
support American Citizen Services (ACS), Non-Immigrant Visas (NIV),
Immigrant Visas and Diversity Visas (TV/DV), Backup Namecheck System
(BNS), Consular Management, and Office Automation (such as the
Microsoft office product suite). BNS is the new and improved local
namecheck system which is replacing the Distributed Namecheck System
(DNC). The Oracle database engine is the foundation for most of these
applications.
At CA Headquarters, the primary systems are the Consular Consolidated
Database (CCD), the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), and
the Passport Record Information Systems Manager (PRISM). Access to all
these systems are available to the consular posts, though access is
restricted according to entries in the consular support tables. Data is
shared with INS from CCD and CLASS. CCD stores information about
visas and replicates the information stored at the local posts every 5-10
minutes. Records in CCD are indexed by post and visa issuance number.
PRISM stores information on issued passports from the last 20 years.
Data is entered into PRISM manually. The passport issuance process is

Pagel Record of Interview

 ared by: richard hung Index:
: May 30,2002 DOC Library:
Job Code:460525 DOC Number:

handled through the 16 passport centers. When the passport is issued, the
paperwork is forwarded for scanning into PRISM.

CLASS is the namecheck system which is checked prior to the issuance of

visas and passports. The Visa database (foreigners) of CLASS currently
has about 6.5 million records. The passport database (U.S. citizens) of
CLASS currently has about 3.2 million records. T^iere^is also a database of
both U.S. and foreign lost and stolen passports and vis^s. For the
issuance of visas, the passport database is not checked. Similarly, for the
issuance of passports, the visa database is not checked. Data to populate
CLASS comes from a variety of sources, including TIPOFF (State's ^
unclassified intelligence database), FBI, US Marshals Service, INS, Health
and Human Services, Customs, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Additional records are being incorporated from the FBI including 400,000
terrorist records and about 8 million criminal history records.

In the event CLASS is not available, consular posts run a namecheck

against DNC which has all the names stored in CLASS but does not run all
the techniques or algorithms to match names which are used in CLASS.
TIPOFF data is unclassified and consists of the name, date of birth, and
place of birth which have been collected by State's Intelligence and
Research group.

State has been running pilots of facial recognition at 25 posts for a few
years. For the most part, facial recognition is being used to match photos
with other photos to identify people applying more than once for diversity
visas or nonimmigrant visas. There has also been some application of
matching photos from these sources to watchlist photos. In both cases, a
l:n match is attempted. One of the primary problems being encountered
is the quality of the photographs. With the exception of the issuance of
border crossing cards in Mexico, photos for DVs and NIVs are submitted
by the applicant and than photographed for entry into the computer
system. However, even in Mexico, State is encountering problems with
image quality due to issues with lighting and other environmental factors.
The State department is working to develop photo quality standards. For
the participating posts, as a visa application is entered into the local
system and replicated onto CCD, the facial recognition software tries to
perform matches of the applicant's face with other faces in the system and
stores the matches with the applicant's record. Their current system has
about 22 million photographs. Current procedures specify that photos
from all issued and refused visa applications be scanned into the system.

State officials showed us some of the matches and in some cases the
software worked well, but in other instances, the system was presenting
matches for faces which were clearly not the same. The current system
does match images which may in fact both be legitimate. For example, if
a person is issued a short-term visa and then comes back to the post to
renew their visa, they would (should) be identified as a match to their
previous record. State is using both Visionics and Viisage software and
were advised by the vendors to retain all images, as future versions of the
software may utilize a different template format. Visionics has not proven
to be scalable to the workload required by State. Hence, it is only

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 epared by: richard hung Index:
Jate: May 30, 2002 DOC Library:
Job Code: 460525 DOC Number:

currently being used in Manila, Philippines and compared against records

in the Philippines, and not against all images in the database. In the
Philippines, consular officials are trying to use the facial recognition
match as an additional input into their visa adjudication process in a
manner similar to a namecheck hit.

For both systems, thresholds can be set by the user to tighten or loosen
the match quality of the system. State officials have not noticed any
appreciable match quality differentiation between Visionics and Viisage.
They have found that the matching of children has been difficult due to
the fact their faces change so quickly. The DV centers have had a positive
reaction to the use of the facial recognition system.

Since December 2001, State has been providing CCD information about
issued visas to INS so that the information can be brought up in secondary
inspection at the ports of entry. State and INS are working to provide data
on visas issued prior to December 2001 so that information will also be
accessible at the ports of entry by the end of FY 2002. A couple months
ago, State provided a proposal to INS to provide them similar information
for U.S. passports; however, State has not yet received a response from
INS.
State has provided pictures from its Mexican database to NIST in support
of this year's Facial Recognition Vendor Test. State has several
documents on their facial recognition work including an evaluation
report, proposed standards for picture quality, and a concept of
operations. John Atkins will provide us copies electronically.

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