Biometrics inspire trust, policy-makers invite backlash
📄 Article Content
# Biometrics inspire trust, policy-makers invite backlash
Sep 13, 2025, 1:04 pm EDT | Chris Burt
Categories Biometrics News | Industry Analysis
Biometrics technology appears to be advancing more steadily than the policies and implementation practices that are necessary to make proper use of them, based on several of the top stories this week on _Biometric Update_. Evaluations of fingerprint biometrics and facial age estimation by NIST show steady improvements in accuracy, and more flexibility is coming available for organizations using fingerprints. But just issuing ID cards as previously committed to is proving difficult in Romania, and age verification in practice is so far working out too often the way its critics said it would.
Part of the challenge is the ever-increasing demands placed on biometric technology, as seen at America’s Southern border.
## Biometrics run for the border
DHS has requested information from vendors on biometrics in can use at U.S. borders for identification without slowing the flow of people and goods. A virtual assessment event runs in October for the agency to pick a technology that requires minimal oversight and works in extreme conditions. Facial recognition that identifies all the occupants in moving vehicles are part of the plan.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations, DHS investigative arm, has signed a $9.2 million contract with Clearview AI. The price of HIS’s contracts with the company have increased along with the scope of use for its facial recognition, from child sexual exploitation to assaults on law enforcement officers.
## Digital ID ambitions
The digital ID ambitions of the EU and World are bold, the adoption numbers still to come, they hope.
Romania is reducing the number of electronic identity cards it is planning to issue for free by a million and a half following a cut to the project’s budget. It risks fines that eventually in theory could stretch into hundreds of millions of euros for missing the EU’s digita