June 1, 2004 – The Department of Homeland Security awarded a group of 30 companies a contract potentially worth $10 billion to develop technology to monitor foreign visitors. The contract would beef up the monitoring at borders of non-U.S. citizens introduced under the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program. Accenture, along with Dell, Titan and others will develop and deploy technologies to fingerprint and photograph non-U.S. citizens entering and exiting the country's 400 air, land and sea ports of entry by Dec. 31, 2005. The group of companies, called the "Smart Border Alliance" may also develop radio frequency identification tags and iris scans for visitors to the U.S. to undergo before being allowed entry into the country.
