Patent ID: 8604901

Claim:
A method for ensuring the provenance of passengers at a transportation facility, comprising: (a) providing a first biometric reading device at a first station, wherein the biometric is capable of one-to-many matching and acquiring a first biometric template; (b) storing in a secure database the first biometric template and associating it with one of: a gate number, a flight number, a security risk, an immigration status or other group and a time, without any associated information that uniquely identifies an individual corresponding to the first biometric template; (c) acquiring a second biometric template of a prospective passenger using a second biometric reading device at a second station; (d) indexing into the secure database based on the one of: the gate number, the flight number, the security risk, the immigration status or other group and the time, without using any associated information that uniquely identifies the prospective passenger corresponding to the second biometric template, to select a set of biometric templates of passengers expected to be at the second station based on the indexing, to forward to a biometric match process at the second station; and (e) determining, by the biometric match process via one-to-many matching without using any associated information that uniquely identifies the prospective passenger, if a match exists between the second biometric template and a biometric template from the set of biometric templates.