On Feb. 20, the White House released the National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel, which will rely on validating identities and leveraging biometric ID systems to detect and stop terrorists as they travel.
The whole-of-government approach aims to equip state, local and tribal partners with “terrorism-identity and travel data, as well as the tools and technology necessary to identify terrorists at the earliest opportunity,” the strategy said. That information will come from improved identity-management systems and the expanded collection of suspicious travel indicators as well as “biometric, biographic, and derogatory data for vetting and screening.”
Vetting, according to the document, includes “automated biographic and/or biometric matching against watchlists and threat information as well as manual and automated processes used to resolve potential matches and false positives.”