Experts Say Creation of National Id Card Falls Short of What's Needed to Thwart Terrorism

"The capacity to access, compile and cross-index various forms of disparate security and surveillance data, and then quickly build a multimedia profile of an individual comprised of speech, video, biometric, text and database information, would yield much stronger and insightful results on the war against terrorism than simply a one-dimensional mandated national ID card system," says Wactlar.

"Recently, it was reported that a man in the "Newport News" was taken into custody with 10 different passports - all in his own name, social security number and date of birth. Not withstanding such obvious loop holes, the creation of a common, unified view of an individual through an integrated platform of disparate media and data sources, such as passport photos, drivers license and airport surveillance images, will enable security personnel to have access to an in-depth, chronological view of the activities of potential dangerous suspects," said Pendyala.

Wactlar and Pendyala are working on new technology that will help security and law enforcement agencies capture, analyze, manage and compile a wide range of media and biometric data. The aggregation and analysis of this type of information would have a profound impact on the effectiveness of security applications, ranging from airport security and immigration surveillance to local police officers having mobile wireless access to multiple data sources.