But in a lawsuit newly unsealed in federal court in San Jose, plaintiffs identified as two former company executives say the technology was actually developed by a Russian firm, is used by Russia’s security agency, and could be sabotaged in the event of a crisis.
“It is conceivable,” the suit said, that the software contains a “back door” that would enable the Russian government to “override fingerprint identification devices in such strategic places (as) the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA (National Security Agency) and other secure areas, and gain unauthorized entry.”
A confidential, 25-year agreement between the French and Russian companies, signed in 2008, includes a declaration by the Russian firm, Papillon ZAO, that its software does not contain “any undisclosed ‘back door’” or other disabling mechanism. But the lawsuit said the declaration has not been independently verified, by either the French firm or any government agency.
That might not matter for routine uses of fingerprint-identification technology, like issuing replacement driver’s licenses. But federal agencies also use the technology for more sensitive purposes, like allowing only people with clearances and a matching print on file to gain access to secure areas. Such protections could be bypassed if the technology were hacked.
“The national security implications are significant,” attorney Daniel Bartley of Campbell said in the lawsuit.
The suit said the French firm, Morpho, and its parent company, Safran Group, also based in France, made “surreptitious sales” of more than $1 billion in Russian technology to federal, state and local governments in the United States between 2009 and 2015.
Morpho’s website describes the company as “the acknowledged expert in identification systems,” and says it supplies technology to the FBI, the Defense and State departments, the Transportation Security Administration, and more than half of all state and local government agencies in the United States.
Bartley described his two clients as “whistle-blowers” and “very credible.” One, Philippe Desbois, is a former chief executive officer of Morpho’s Russian affiliate and was Safran’s financial representative in Russia until mid-2014, the suit said. It said the second plaintiff, Vincent Hascoet, was deputy director of an affiliated company, PowerJet, in Moscow from July 2012 through May 2014, and was fired after complaining of corruption. Both are French citizens who live in Russia.
Their suit says Morpho and Safran defrauded the U.S. government and the state of California by falsely claiming their technology as French rather than Russian, violating antitrust laws and presenting false claims for payment. It invokes laws allowing private citizens to collect a portion of any resulting damages, and seeks court orders making the companies ineligible for contracts with the U.S. or the state. It was filed in San Jose because Morpho has an office there.
The allegations haven’t won any public support from the federal or state governments. Bartley said he presented his evidence to the U.S. Justice Department and the California attorney general’s office in a private meeting in July 2015, and both agencies declined to intervene in the case. Bartley also said the federal and state governments, and the governments of many U.S. allies, continue to use Morpho products.
In a statement denouncing the suit, Safran Group’s U.S. affiliate said the government agencies exercised “due diligence” in deciding not to intervene.
The suit “contains inflammatory and baseless allegations and lacks merit,” Safran U.S. said Thursday. “As the leader of the biometric industry for over 42 years, we take the defense of our reputation and security matters about products and solutions very seriously. We are confident that we will successfully defend the case.”
Bartley called the statement evasive because it did not address the central claim that the technology in Safran and Morpho products is actually Russian. The attorney, who has filed many such suits for different clients, said the federal government seldom chooses to intervene, but he’s puzzled by officials’ apparently calm response to these allegations.
“It’s hard for me to understand why something like this wouldn’t have resulted in swift action and alarm bells going off in Washington,” Bartley said.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit.
©2016 the San Francisco Chronicle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
