WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- U.S. homeland security officials will face tough questions Wednesday from senators about their biometric system for tracking foreign visitors.
The first hearing this year of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, chaired by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., will examine "challenges and strategies" for the system, called U.S.-VISIT, which uses ink-less fingerprint sans and digital photographs to check the identity of most foreign visitors to the United States.
But the Department of Homeland Security has yet to implement the so-called exit stage of the system, which registers when foreigners leave; or to work out how to use it for more than a small proportion of those entering by land. Most importantly, the department is sitting on a long overdue strategy paper that will lay out how U.S.-VISIT will fit with the numerous other border and aviation security programs that homeland security runs.
Robert Mocny, acting director of the U.S.-VISIT program, will likely face tough questions from senators about the strategy -- and how he plans to implement the congressionally mandated exit stage.
When DHS told congressional investigators last month that it had no plan as yet for the exit stage, Feinstein said she was "dismayed."
"Billions of dollars and countless hours have been invested, and if DHS is going to throw this all away, the American people deserve to know why," she said in statement.
But former DHS official Stewart Verdery told United Press International that the inter-agency government process for agreeing such issues was "very complex ... It's not unusual for things to get stuck in the policy process."
Verdery, who will testify on a panel of experts tomorrow after Mocny and another department official, said the strategy had been "held up because key decisions on issues like the exit (stage) and how they are going to do the land ports of entry have not been made to date."
