Shipping registry deploys biometric ID card for seafarers

Computerworld - The Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry (LISCR), which represents approximately 2,000 cargo and luxury cruise vessels and as many as 500,000 seafarers, is deploying biometric identity cards for seafarers to help prevent identity fraud.
Although there are no industry standards or requirements for verifying the identity of ships' crew members around the globe, the LISCR decided to move ahead with demonstrating the benefits of biometrics for identity verification, said Scott Bergeron, chief operating officer for maritime services at the Vienna, Va.-based registry.
Bergeron said LISCR, the second-largest shipping registry in the world, wanted to help fight terrorism by using the new biometric cards to improve the seafarer identification process. Law enforcement agencies have raised questions about whether paper IDs could be forged by terrorists and used to slip into the U.S.
The card uses a counterfeit-proof, 2-D bar-code technology from Philadelphia-based Datastrip Inc., according to Chuck Lynch, vice president of sales and marketing at Datastrip.
Lynch said each crew member's identity card will include a tiny Datastrip bar code containing one or two fingerprint templates, a digitized version of the cardholder's photograph and several pages of encoded personal information.
He said identity verification will be performed on vessels and at ports of entry by Datastrip's DSVerify2D, a portable biometric ID card reader capable of decoding fingerprints, text and photographs with one swipe. The reader includes an optical fingerprint scanner that can match stored fingerprint templates with the cardholder's live fingerprints on the spot, preventing identity fraud, Lynch said.
The cards, which can be produced for less than $1 each, can't be counterfeited because the technology doesn't capture actual fingerprints, but rather creates a unique template using mathematical algorithms, he said.
The LISCR is in the process of outfitting 2,000 of its seafarers with the new biometric ID card and hopes to roll out the cards to all members by the end of the year, Bergeron said.