An HS Daily Wire conversation with Robert Horton of Motorola
its bureau of investigation. Within those 19 states, the Motorola Printrak BIS is also the choice of a majority of the larger cities and counties, each of which may operate its own BIS system in addition to that maintained by the state. In Florida, for example, Motorola furnishes its BIS to both the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and to a number of large counties, among them Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Manatee, and Lee. Within the “competitor states” — those in which a rival has provided the state AFIS system, Motorola also has customers at the city and county level for its interoperable biometric products. Horton identifies only three companies worldwide with which his company shares this space: NEC, of Japan; the French firm Sagem; and California-based Cogent Systems. For all of these, this is a busy time. Horton said, “Several large counties in California, including Solano and Santa Clara, use our system which includes interfaces with both the state and the FBI. We also participate in the livescan market, which is automatic enrollment of biometrics into the AFIS system. We have livescan customers in 30 states.”
As noted by Horton, the Motorola biometrics customer base falls into two swathes, the first of which — government public-safety police agencies — has been reviewed. The company does the remaining 20 percent of its biometrics work for civil agencies in a variety of endeavors involving an AFIS. These programs, too, are sponsored and commissioned by governments, but not administered by their public-safety agencies. A civil application cited by Horton is the refugee tracking system in use in Belgium. With Motorola Livescan, fingerprints are taken from every applicant for refugee status there. Comparison, by way of a Motorola AFIS, establishes whether the refugee has applied for such status before, under an alternate name or names. Interface with the Europe-wide system Eurodac expands the scope of inquiry. Since 9/11, of course, biometrics has gained in importance for such items as travel visas and e-passports, and Motorola’s involvement has grown apace. “The passport issued by Guatemala uses Motorola biometrics to check for duplicate enrollment,” said Horton. “We’ve also supplied a visa and passport-enrollment system to Norway and a driver’s license program to El Salvador. Working with a prime contractor, we installed a system to assist the state of California to check for welfare fraud. When you apply for welfare benefits there, you have your
