FEATURE ARTICLE

June 2005

Biometrics Systems Help Strengthen Border Security in Persian Gulf Nation

By Roxana Tiron

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates—Combined, the seven emirates that make up this Persian Gulf country amount to the size of the U.S. state of Maine. But what the UAE lacks in territory, it makes up in wealth and unprecedented population growth.

Because the Emirates depend heavily on an outside workforce, the steady influx of expatriates has boosted the population in recent years to more than four million, out of which only 20 percent are UAE citizens. Foreign workers pour in not only from the region, but also from every continent. The Gulf nation, with its shops, beaches, golf courses and desert attractions, increasingly is becoming a tourist haven.

Having to deal with a daily onslaught of immigrants and visitors, the UAE has had to resort to advanced technology to strengthen its border control and to weed out potential terrorists.

This Middle Eastern country—caught in the crosshairs of regional instability created by the Iraq war and a territorial feud with Iran—has tapped into biometrics, as one of most assured methods to avert security problems, law enforcement officials told National Defense.

The UAE is one of the first countries to use an iris scan at most points of entry. Officials started the “Eye Scan Project” in 2000 by installing systems at three major jails across the country, said 1st Lt. Talal Ahmed. He works in the security-technology department at Abu Dhabi police headquarters, which is part of the UAE ministry of the interior.

The project was expanded to ports and airports in 2002, Ahmed said during a military show in Abu Dhabi, the capital. For example, at the Dubai airport, one of the busiest in the world, all arriving passengers have to wait in line to have their eyes scanned.

“The UAE is the first country in the world to implement the iris scan as a border-control method,” said Lt. Moh’d Humaid Almualla, who oversees the information technology department. “We are still learning from our system,” he added. Other users of this system include Canada and the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The iris scan system is produced by Iridian Technologies, based in Moorestown, New Jersey. The company’s offices in the United Kingdom deal with the contracts in the Middle East. Just like its name suggests, the system scans the iris and stores data in the form of coded symbols, which cannot be forged or manipulated.

Iris recognition is hailed as of the most accurate techniques of biometrics, in part because the human iris does not change from birth. The iris is the visible, colored ring that surrounds the pupil, a muscular structure that controls the amount of light entering the eye. A scan measures the striations, pits and furrows to establish an identity.

No two irises are alike. There is no correlation between the iris patterns of even identical twins, or the right and left eye of an individual.

An iris-recognition camera takes a black-and-white picture five to 24 inches from the eye, depending on the camera. The camera uses non-invasive, near-infrared illumination that is similar to a TV remote control, barely visible and considered safe.

The picture first is processed by software that localizes the inner and outer boundaries of the iris, and the eyelid contours, in order to extract just the iris portion. The software creates a so-called phase code for the texture of the iris, similar to a DNA sequence code.

The unique features of the iris are captured by this code and can be compared against a large database of scanned irises to make a match.

In the case of the UAE, the information obtained from the iris scan is sent to the main database located at the police headquarters in Abu Dhabi. The iris scan makes it very difficult to forge identities. It also prevents people from leaving the country illegally or re-entering if they previously had been deported, said Almualla.

The UAE police headquarters bought the technology and license for the iris scan from Iridian Technologies and custom-developed a system that suited the country’s requirements, said Almualla. Even though the system has been in place for at least three years at the ports of entry, law enforcement still is struggling with the public’s perception of the iris scan.

“People are not aware of the existence of iris, and they get annoyed if their eyes are being captured on the camera,” said Almualla. “They think it is a laser beam, but it is only a digital camera.” Camera operators also need to be trained how best to use the system, said Ahmed. “We try to make the system as simple as possible.”

More than 500,000 people have been scanned since 2002, and 26,000 of those were caught trying to bend the legal system, he added. Among the more prominent sites, the iris scan is present at the Abu Dhabi International Airport, two terminals in the Dubai International Airport, the Zayed port, Al Sadr prison, Jabal Ali port, Al-Fujeira airport and the Um Al-Quwein port.

The UAE police headquarters is in the process of testing some much smaller and more efficient cameras for the iris scan, said Almualla. All existing cameras eventually will be replaced with a newer generation, he said.

Almualla’s department also oversees a unified criminal investigation system for the entire country. The system shares information with all police departments and will be integrated with the iris scan database, Almualla said. “All the people who have committed a crime will have a record in our system,” he said. “The iris is in fact a system that detects people who were deported or should have been deported, and now it is going to be integrated with other systems.”

The expansion of databases is next on the department’s agenda, he said. The incoming systems will deal with information ranging from traffic violations to crime and terrorism. “The focus is on the security of the country,” said Ahmed. “Since the UAE has some of the highest population growth in the world, it is trying to keep up with the latest technologies to ensure security.”

One of the future initiatives involves installing so-called “e-gates” at all airports, which would speed up entry and exit procedures. This system already is in place at the Dubai airport. For about $40, passengers can have their passports scanned, fingerprints and photo taken, and have all this information stored on a card no bigger than a U.S. driver’s license. The card is valid for two years.

The owners of such cards do not have to wait in the long passport control lines, and can have cards scanned by turnstile machines similar to those at any U.S. subway station. “Once the information is authenticated and automated on the machine, they can go through,” said Ahmed.

In the same vein, the UAE is working on an identification card project that will serve the “same purpose as the U.S. social security number,” said Ahmed. The smart card will hold a person’s entire information from date of birth, fingerprints, driver’s license, health card, employment authorization, picture and passport information.

“There will be readers for this card and authentication,” said Almualla. “Now we are using fingerprints, but in the future it will be the scanned iris.”

Because the UAE is so dependant on digital information and computer networks, police there have built a disaster recovery site that has backups for all databases, which it updates every couple of minutes. The network is secure, and there are checks on the system itself, said Ahmed. “It is not easy to get access to the network.”

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