DOGE’s infiltration into core of federal biometrics management sets off alarms

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has now insinuated itself into the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), one of the federal government’s most sensitive and agencies.

Once a relatively obscure but essential component of DHS which serves the Department of Justice, Pentagon, and Intelligence Community, OBIM is now under new scrutiny as DOGE, which has a broad and shadowy mission to ostensibly streamline federal operations and assert greater executive oversight over digital infrastructure. DOGE’s infiltration of OBIM is raising serious and legitimate questions about what it intends to do with the U.S.’s principle biometric surveillance architecture.

DOGE’s efforts to access sensitive data across the federal government have already led to legal challenges. The Trump administration has requested the U.S. Supreme Court to allow DOGE to access Social Security systems containing comprehensive personal information. This emergency appeal follows a Maryland federal judge’s ruling that restricts DOGE’s access under federal privacy laws, citing concerns about privacy infringement and lack of evidence of specific fraud.

OBIM manages one of the largest biometric identity systems in the world, supporting border enforcement, visa applications, immigration adjudications, law enforcement, and intelligence functions by maintaining a massive biometric repository of fingerprints, facial recognition scans, and iris data. Its legacy system, the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), stores more than 300 million biometric records and routinely handles hundreds of thousands of queries daily. Despite its age, IDENT remains a cornerstone of U.S. homeland security infrastructure, relied upon not only by DHS but also by other federal departments and even international partners.

In recent weeks, three individuals — one currently within DHS and two more familiar with the matter — confirmed that DOGE has now embedded itself within OBIM, FedScoop reports. Two of these sources reported that DOGE is pushing to revive internal conversations around the long-delayed and politically sensitive Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) program.

Meant to replace IDENT, HART was envisioned as a more modern, cloud-hosted biometric system capable of sophisticated identity matching without the burdens of aging hardware dependencies. However, HART has struggled for years with implementation challenges, cost overruns, and internal controversy, leaving its future uncertain.

DOGE’s presence at OBIM is not merely observational. One DHS source reportedly stated that DOGE recently requested a detailed memo examining the future of HART, IDENT, and the Traveler Verification Service (TVS). TVS is a separate biometric system operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for use at ports of entry and airports.

According to the source, a meeting was held between DOGE officials, OBIM leadership, and CBP representatives to reevaluate the current trajectory of federal biometric systems. While DOGE has not directly accessed OBIM’s biometric databases, its involvement in strategic planning has raised questions about how far-reaching the administration’s influence will be. Insiders fear that it is only a matter of time before DOGE seeks direct access to OBIM databases, much as it has with Department of Treasury, OPM, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.

The implications of DOGE doing this are significant. OBIM’s database can retrieve data linked to a State Department visa application, a CBP border crossing, a change in immigration status logged by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, law enforcement investigations, and even federal security clearances.

In essence, the system forms a digital backbone to a constellation of immigration and national security functions. Any alteration to how this infrastructure is managed or modernized has a ripple effect across federal enforcement, intelligence, adjudication, and diplomatic activities.

The HART initiative has been a particular flashpoint within DHS. Initially proposed as a next-generation solution to IDENT’s aging infrastructure, HART was designed to shift biometric identity management to the cloud and utilize modular, software-driven architecture. However, its promise has been mired in missteps. A 2022 attempt to deploy HART in “parallel operations” with IDENT — meant to allow side-by-side performance evaluations — collapsed due to technical shortcomings.

By 2023, the Government Accountability Office had flagged serious issues related to privacy compliance, program oversight, and budget transparency. The program’s costs ballooned far beyond original projections and key components remained years behind schedule.

In an effort to stabilize the initiative, DHS leadership in 2024 moved responsibility for HART from OBIM to the department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, signaling an attempt to centralize accountability and introduce more disciplined project management. This transition also included a restructuring of vendor relationships.

Instead of relying on a single contractor, the program was diversified across multiple vendors and internal federal technical personnel were given a larger role in overseeing development. According to a former senior DHS official, the objective was to reassert government control over the core architecture while mitigating vendor lock-in.

Despite these reforms, however, OBIM’s target for reaching initial operating capacity for HART has now been pushed to fiscal year 2027. Current DHS insiders confirm that HART is not ready for joint operation with IDENT, and the prospect of sunsetting IDENT remains aspirational rather than actionable. These delays have allowed DOGE to enter the conversation at a moment of organizational vulnerability.

With HART stalled and IDENT increasingly costly to maintain due to its reliance on aging, on-premises legacy infrastructure and proprietary hardware, the Trump administration appears poised to question whether the HART approach is still viable or whether alternative solutions should be considered.

From the perspective of DOGE, which has advocated aggressively for centralized control over federal IT systems, biometric infrastructure is a logical frontier. The department’s recent efforts to consolidate identity data across federal agencies have drawn significant public scrutiny, particularly for their implications in immigration enforcement.

DOGE has also initiated efforts to build a master database capable of integrating information from SSA, IRS, state voter rolls, and various DHS systems. Although OBIM’s systems were not among the systems that DOGE had direct access to, its current involvement in shaping the future of biometric databases raises red flags for civil liberties advocates and national security officials.

The idea that a politically aligned office like DOGE could help steer the direction of biometric surveillance introduces both ethical and strategic questions. The IDENT system, for all its limitations, was developed and maintained under longstanding federal norms around privacy, data use, and interagency controls. It’s not at all clear whether DOGE abides by federal privacy laws, as its internal workings are not transparent.

The prospect of redesigning or replacing IDENT under DOGE’s influence –especially if the goal is increased operational reach or enforcement capacity — could lead to expansive government surveillance capabilities with few checks and balances. The consolidation of federal biometric capabilities under a single, executive-aligned architecture would represent a major inflection point in the history of American identity infrastructure and citizen surveillance.

Compounding these concerns is the international dimension of OBIM’s work. OBIM routinely exchanges biometric data with allied governments under bilateral and multilateral agreements. Any shifts in U.S. data governance practices –particularly if perceived as politicized or misaligned with privacy norms — could jeopardize those international partnerships.

Countries that share biometric intelligence with the United States do so under the assumption of mutual legal and operational safeguards. If DOGE’s influence leads to the dismantling or radical restructuring of these safeguards, it could trigger diplomatic fallout and reduce U.S. access to critical international data and intelligence streams.

For now, DHS has declined to publicly comment on DOGE’s presence within OBIM or its involvement in strategic planning around biometric systems. The administration’s silence is unlikely to quell the growing concern among oversight bodies, civil rights organizations, and technical experts who view the politicization of biometric governance as a looming risk.

What remains clear is that OBIM has become a new focal point in the federal government’s contested digital landscape. And with DOGE now asserting itself in matters that blend national security, civil liberties, and cutting-edge technology, the path forward will likely be defined by high-stakes decisions about how much control any one entity — especially one born from a political and ideological mandate — should exert over the architecture of identification in America.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometric database  |  biometric identification  |  DHS  |  DOGE  |  Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART)  |  identity management  |  OBIM  |  U.S. Government