Every day, human and drug traffickers, smugglers, criminals and terrorists attempt to enter the U.S. through one of our 328 ports of entry. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is responsible for preventing these unlawful entries by securing and screening nearly one million people at our ports of entry and borders on a daily basis. CBP has implemented face comparison and ID validation verification technologies to drastically reduce the number of people that require direct screening by CBP officers. However, in order to successfully determine who is legally allowed to enter the country and who isn’t, training in identity verification, also known as impostor detection, and ID verification are still critical to the CBP mission to examine credentials and effectively validate the identity of persons attempting to enter the country.
Identity verification and impostor detection are critical, yet challenging skills to learn and execute. Without proper training, CBP officers may experience inconsistent results and varying degrees of success during their attempts to validate the identity and credentials of people entering the country. To remain at the forefront of training technologies, CBP’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and FLETC Training Innovations Division (TID) to develop a new technology that uses eye tracking feedback to maximize officer performance in impostor identification and ID validation training.
In 2016, DHS S&T transitioned the new training system to CBP’s OFO Academy. Eye-dentify™, developed in collaboration with Design Interactive Inc., uses eye-tracking technology and training software to teach CBP officers the skills and best practices related to X-ray screening, identity verification/impostor detection, and ID validation. Leveraging these S&T-developed tools will help ensure that officers can reliably and consistently execute their mission in this area as efficiently and accurately as possible.