WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — SIBA's Chairman of the Board, Paul Schuepp, issued the following statement today:
"The biometric community has the ability and responsibility to proactively engage the most pressing economic and national security policy issues that involve human access or identification facing the United States today. The Secure Identity & Biometrics Association (SIBA) is the non-profit trade association poised to do just that. We have the best possible leadership in Janice Kephart, former 9/11 Commission and Senate counsel, who founded SIBA and is using her powerhouse credibility and savvy to take our industry to the next level of positive public engagement.
SIBA members have come on board to bridge the gap between industry, government and the media in supporting policies and solutions that protect Americans while supporting a more secure and economically viable America. We are already working on a set of private principles to support the Department of Homeland Security's Air Entry and Exit Re-Engineering (AEER) Program, whose purpose includes implementing the 16 year statutory requirement for a biometric exit program. Those principles will be honed and discussed in a private sector meeting for interested biometric vendors to be held on October 21 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. (Vendors are welcome to contact us.) We believe this process this is the first step in establishing a solid public-private partnership with DHS that we hope will be a model of the good government that the public has the right to expect.
With ISIS directly threatening America and a growing problem of anonymous entry over our southern border, SIBA will continue to bridge the gap between government, policy, industry and the media every chance it gets. Our engagement index for just our press releases, for example, is at about 9/10ths above the market in the biometrics and government sectors. For many of these issues, getting the policy, facts and solution right is critical and a moving target, as biometric capabilities improve and applications multiply daily. This is what SIBA does.
While deploying biometrics to unmask ISIS may be obvious to some, biometrics in other sectors has a murky and misunderstood reputation. Healthcare is one of those areas. The Affordable Care Act has gained millions of new subscribers, yet identity and medical records are not assured or protected. Biometrics can help solve many attending issues, but to do so requires expertise and a private-public partnership between government and industry that today are non-existent.
In the private sector, SIBA was the first biometrics organization to have its members present at the Commerce Department's NTIA meetings to create an enforceable code of conduct on facial recognition applications in the commercial sector, with our company, Animetrics, as a presenter – an issue near to my heart. SIBA will continue to watch carefully the increasing deployment of biometric products by companies like Apple, where the most essential protection on these devices is inevitably the identity access and verification on the device – the biometric. That means the biometric must be fail-safe for convenience, security and privacy."
About Paul Schuepp
In July 2014, Paul Schuepp was voted in as SIBA's first Chairman. Schuepp is a veteran facial biometric and forensic subject matter expert as well as co-founder who spent 11 years as Animetrics' CEO. As Animetrics' CEO Schuepp developed biometric and forensic 3D and pose correction facial recognition investigative products deployed by the law enforcement (states, DOD, and DOJ) and intelligence communities worldwide, even solving cold criminal cases while enabled investigators to nab dangerous individuals.
Schuepp's media appearances on facial recognition uses, capabilities and its future include Fox News, Al Jazeera America, CNN, Forbes, The Boston Globe and Popular Science. Prior to Animetrics, Paul has a long success record within the telecommunications and computer manufacturing industry including VP at Lucent Technologies, Ascend Communications, Stratus Computer and IBM.
CONTACT: Janice Kephart
703.581.7721