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Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM

The Port of Palm Beach FL is working with Cross Match Technologies to develop a new biometric SecurePort visitor management program. This pilot program at the fourth busiest container port in Florida and the 18th busiest in the continental United States is logging entry and exit of 200 to 300 truck drivers and others visiting the port daily with fingerprints and photographs using Cross Match's VisTrak and MV 100 digital fingerprinting systems.

Similar to the Department of Homeland Security's “US-VISIT” program, the SecurePort program captures biometric and biographic information from visitors and checks it against a banned visitor list. The system provides an accurate audit trail of visitors, including fingerprints, photos, time and date of arrival and departure, demographic information, company, and purpose, and provides visitors with temporary badges. Florida has a rule allowing visitors to enter the port a maximum of five times within a 90-day period. The fingerprinting system keeps track of frequency and flags any violators.

“Our new SecurePort program replaces an old paper visitor log process, making the processing of visitors three times as fast,” said Carl Baker, special assistant to the port director.

The port also uses Cross Match's MV 100 handheld fingerprint and photograph capture system, with built-in PDA, to log and transmit data to a central database wirelessly.