Today, El-De would have a relatively easy time in raising capital as technologies that scan faces and fingerprints are on the drawing board to become a standard part of travel for foreign visitors to the United States.
The rush to develop and to bring to the market the underlying technology, known as biometrics, following security concerns after the attacks on Sept. 11, has greatly accelerated.
By October 26, 2004, the State Department and Immigration Bureau will begin issuing visas and other documents to foreign visitors, with the body-identifying technologies. The change is mandated by border security legislation passed by the American Congress in May 2003.
Officials from the American State Department said that mandatory use of the biometric identifiers is scheduled to begin in three years.
Biometric systems take digital measurements of a person's fingerprints, face, retinas or other characteristics and store the information on a computer chip or a machine-readable strip, which can be retrieved at border check points.
Upon arrival, travelers will be asked to put their fingers on scanners and to stand in front of facial recognition cameras to see if their measurements match the ones stored on the visa or passport. Biometric systems tested by the United States at the Mexican border have been sensitive enough to distinguish between identical twins.
Israel is very sensitive to the issues of personal security and more than two years ago have adopted a fingerprint recognition system.
This system is deployed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, and processes tens of thousands passengers each month through immigration with RSI HandReader kiosks. The new 'Dual-Biometric Recognition System, produced by the American IR Recognirion Systems company combines hand geometry and face recognition technology to create a redundant, convenient and highly accurate system for identifying and verifying the identity of individuals, according to unique physical traits parameters.
The airport reduced processing times to less than 20 seconds, and has become very popular with the traveling public. Israeli citizens and frequent international travelers at Ben Gurion now go through the airport's automatic inspection kiosks. During enrollment, the system captures biographic information and biometric hand-geometry data.
During arrival or departure, travelers use a credit card for initial identification, and the system verifies their identity with the HandReader. The system then prints a receipt to allow travelers to proceed. Ben Gurion's biometric identification system has reduced or in some cases eliminated waiting times for travelers. Nearly 80,000 Israeli citizens have enrolled in the system.which completed more than 1 million inspections the first year of use.
Israel Ben Haim, managing director of Ben Gurion International Airport, is extremely pleased with the system. "Tighter security expedites air travel, and more efficient operations help make our airport one of the world's best," he said.
Another dual hand-face biometric system is about to be deployed at the Israeli-Palestinian land border for improved border control and faster processing.
Yona Flink, CEO, OptiSec Ltd. a biometric company founded in 1994, founded the company that provided the software solutions for the Ben Gurion Airport Project.
"The rationale for a biometric solution at border crossings is related to Israel's need to allow open borders that would allow for the Palestinian population to enter and exit Israel, while at the same time being able to verify very quickly the identity of the individuals entering or exiting Israel."
Since 2001, the security requirements have become far more stringent than in 1997. However, even with increased security requirements, Israel required that the method used for identifying individuals remain as user friendly as possible, secure, and with little or no interference on the part of Israeli personnel.
Among Israel's f security issues is its need to seal its borders against terrorism while allowing Palestinians to enter and exit Israel in order to conduct their business, visit families, and work in Israel. The 40,000 workers arriving daily from Gaza need to enter Israel within three hours and exit at the end of the working day. This means that 200 Palestinians have to be 'security checked' every day in the morning and then again in the evening. A manual check manually would require hundreds of persons to man the security check points without guarantee of reliability. By using HandGeometry, people entering or exiting Israel can be verified or rejected within two seconds. The HandGeometry readers operates non-stop 24 hours a day.
Palestinians, wishing to enter Israel, will be issued a highly secure smart card after first enrolling into the system, receiving clearance that they have no previous security or criminal records, and that they are not previously enrolled in the system under an alias. The smart card will hold substantial amounts of information including biometric templates and personal and security data.
A Palestinian wishing to enter or exit Israel at a border crossing checkpoint, will present his smart card to a biometric kiosk, the gate will open, he will place his hand on the reader, be biometrically verified as claimed, and after being cleared for entrance into Israel, the gate will open and allow him to enter or exit Israel.
The borders themselves will be protected with the most advanced technology available in fencing, CCTV, intrusion detection and electronic surveillance.
Security and the war on terrorism is an on going battle, that requires the use of the most advanced electronic and biometric technology, but at the same time it must not inconvenience the law abiding citizens that need to enter and exit Israel on a daily basis.
Biometrics will allow Israel to automatically verifying a person's identity in the shortest possible time, the most user friendly way, and maintain its high level of security.
Recently, Smart card On Track Innovations, Ltd., (OTI) (Nasdaq: OTIV; Prime Standard [Frankfurt]: announced that it has completed another stage in the delivery of the infrastructure toward the installation of the Basel Project, a cross-border contactless access control system.
The first border center at the Erez checkpoint between Gaza Strip and Israel, is scheduled to open later this year. When fully operational, the system will monitor the entrance and exit of approximately 120,000 daily workers while assuring a secure, and what is claimed as an exceptionally fast border crossing.
The project, awarded by the Israel Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Israeli National Police, is the first border control system in the world to use both hand and facial biometrics with contactless chip technology as the primary methods of identification.
Those wishing to cross into Israel will be required to obtain a contactless smart card that will be programmed with hand and facial biometrics and include recent photos and personal information programmed on a contactless chip embedded in the card.
The border crossing , which is expected to take no more than four to nine seconds, will be required to wave the card in front of a reader and place their hand on a biometric sensor for identification. Once the identity has been confirmed, an automatic gate will open allowing the person to cross into Israel.
Nearly twenty years ago, El-De, a small Jerusalem based company was among the global pioneers working on developing a fully digitized fingerprint system, in which a "live" fingerprint would be electronically compared with the fingerprint image recorded digitally in the system's memory unit. In 1984 the world had not experienced the September 11 attack and security issues were not the agenda of the investment community. A German company had provided seed money but El-De failed when an American initial public offering was cancelled.