§18934 Biometrics Research and Testing

Summary

The Secretary, through the Director, must set up a program to fund research and testing that measures how well biometric ID systems work, including face recognition. The goal is to help create best practices, benchmarks, methods, and voluntary technical standards to make these systems better. The Director can study things like image quality, device compatibility, contactless capture, and systems that mix people and machines. The Director will work with outside groups to agree on shared meanings for words like accuracy, fairness, bias, privacy, and consent. The program will test many kinds of biometrics (fingerprints, voice, iris, face, vein, behavior, genetics, combinations, and new types), look at privacy tools so researchers can safely use public datasets, share technical help with industry and standards groups, and create standard reference materials when needed. The Secretary, through the Director, must also run a vendor test program so companies can try their biometric technologies across different types. The Director must do regular tests to measure accuracy, effectiveness, and bias, including how systems work for different groups, with different capture devices, against attacks, with partly blocked or computer-made images, and how privacy and template protection work, plus comparing algorithm, human, and combined decisions. The Director must set ways to test software and cloud or remote systems in Institute test facilities, define standard use cases and performance rules, publish reports for the public, make policies for work with foreign entities of concern, give priority to testing technologies from U.S.-headquartered companies, and do other needed work. Not later than 18 months after August 9, 2022, the Comptroller General must give Congress a detailed public report on how biometric ID technology affects historically marginalized communities, including low-income and minority religious, racial, and ethnic groups.