SIA Grows Government Awareness of Airport Security

SIA organizes congressional visit to member company IDEMIA

On April 22, as part of a visit organized by the Security Industry Association (SIA), Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, toured SIA member company IDEMIA’s facility in Anaheim, California, to learn about the security and identification of air travelers.

IDEMIA Identity & Security North America is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, and maintains offices in nearly 20 states. One of the business’ three major market areas includes trusted biometric identity solutions used by public-sector agencies to enhance security.

Since 2005, IDEMIA has supported the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) trusted traveler programs, including PreCheck. IDEMIA provides full enrollment and FBI channeling capabilities to facilitate application and vetting by the U.S. government for multiple security threat assessment programs now operating under the TSA Universal Enrollment Services program in more than 200 locations across the country.  More than 7 million travelers participate in the PreCheck program, and IDEMIA is working with the TSA to grow this population significantly and to provide additional vetting services to enhance risk-based screening efforts that will support more than 2 million travelers daily.

The company is working with TSA to provide greater flexibility for enrollment options and to facilitate mobile and other technologies to provide greater passenger screening and facilitation. IDEMIA also provides credential authentication technologies to TSA that are used at security checkpoints to validate the authenticity of travel documents.

During the visit, Rep. Correa met with several IDEMIA employees, many of whom reside in the congressman’s congressional district. Following a discussion on business and policy interests, IDEMIA demonstrated key technologies like fingerprint and facial recognition readers to show the real-world applications of biometric and secure identity technologies.