Viisage and Motorola Partner to Provide Advanced Identity Solutions for Criminal Identification

Sept. 15, 2005
One of United States largest sheriff's departments first to benefit from joint solution

BILLERICA, Mass. -- Viisage, a leading provider of advanced technology identity solutions, today announced Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) and Viisage have combined their finger print and face recognition solutions to address identity issues for the criminal identification market. The first joint customer to deploy the combined solution is the Harris County, Texas, Sheriff's Department.

"Viisage's face recognition technology stands out as the leading market solution for face recognition on mug-shot databases," said Darrin Reilly, Motorola's Biometrics Business Unit Vice President and General Manager. "We have already begun our work together in Harris County and have witnessed the benefits the joint solution is bringing to our customer, both in terms of power of the solution and time to market."

Harris County, one of the largest sheriff's departments in the United States and a long-time Motorola customer, has chosen the Motorola-Viisage integrated multi-biometric solution to improve its investigative and forensic processes. Harris is enhancing the Motorola Printrak Biometric Identification Solution through the integration to Viisage's law enforcement investigation tools. The toolset Motorola is deploying includes Viisage FaceEXPLORER(R) as part of an integrated face recognition-enabled mug-shot and fingerprinting solution for Harris County.

FaceEXPLORER is a large database identification solution for capturing, enrolling, storing, searching, managing, and retrieving digital images. The solution is deployed around the world and is credited with detecting criminal identity fraud in the law enforcement, border control and civil ID markets. The system couples digital face images with full demographic information storage capabilities making FaceEXPLORER a critical tool for verifying identities. It is used for uncovering duplicate images in large databases, assisting in identity investigations, combating identity theft and fraud, and granting permissions to authorized persons.

"Using both face and fingerprint biometrics to identify criminals gives officers in the station-house and in the field powerful tools that provide timely identification of individuals," said Pete Schroedter, the Harris County Sheriff. "These advanced systems are critical to effectively protecting our citizens and our officers from known violent criminals."

"Increasingly, face recognition is becoming a valued investigative and forensic tool," said Bernard Bailey, president and CEO of Viisage. "Now coupled with Motorola's leading fingerprint technology, we believe we are providing the criminal ID market with an unrivaled solution for quickly and accurately identifying people."

(c) Business Wire