In America, we’ve already seen, through our US visit program, that biometric information can provide an added layer of security while at the same time bringing travelers across our borders with greater ease and convenience. I think many of you are familiar with the US visit program. We were required to establish the program by the Congress. We did just that. Photographs and two fingerprints are recorded. It gives us an opportunity to match those against whatever database we have, both name and fingerprint database.

We’re also working on an easy means to facilitate this process when individuals exit, so we know when they arrived and when they departed. Since the beginning of the year, US visit has processed more than 8 million legitimate passengers, and since the program began, we have matched more than 1,000 potential entrants against various kinds of watch lists that we had. Most of them were on criminal watch lists.

However, to apply the use of biometrics globally, we must develop a set of international standards, and I guess this is the point that I would like to make and emphasize. It’s not about a US standard or an EU standard and another world standard, but the sooner that the world community can embrace an international standard for biometrics, the quicker we’ll be able to secure our borders and make sure that those who visit our respective countries come in with at least a benign if not a hopeful and helpful intent to participate and contribute to our countries.

I think it’s critical that we move this along as quickly as possible, and the best way of facilitating that is not simply on a bilateral-by-bilateral basis, but to get as much multilateral buy-in as soon and as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, you should know, we will develop a set of international standards hopefully to capture, analyze, store, read, and protect biometric data in order to ensure maximum interoperability between systems. If we have a system, it needs somehow to be connected with yours, if that’s your request, and maximum privacy for our citizens. In the meantime, we are currently working with participating countries, including many within the European Union, in the visa waiver program, to develop machine-readable passports that incorporate biometric identifiers.

As nations work to meet the deadline set in place to accomplish biometric passports, in the interim, all visa waiver countries will be enrolled in the US visit program, to ensure maximum security for European Union countries as well as the United States.