22 October 2007

Biometrics 2007: Biometrics industry told to challenge UK government

SA Mathieson

An opponent of one of the world’s largest biometrics projects told those attending the Biometrics 2007 conference it was in their interest to join him – and received a sympathetic hearing.

“The biometrics industry needs to be challenging ministers,” Phil Booth, national co-ordinator for UK anti-identity card group No2ID, told a debate at the conference, held on 18 October in London. In attempting to strengthen the government’s case for the identity scheme, which came into law last year, former home secretary David Blunkett had said it would make identity fraud impossible – a false conclusion, as biometric checks are not perfect.

While making it clear that the campaign group was not opposed to biometrics as a technology, Booth said that the UK government has not considered ethical issues in its use. “We need meaningful engagement,” he told the debate’s audience. “That’s got to come from you guys.”

Emilio Mordini, director of Italy’s centre for science, society and citizenship, and co-ordinator of the Biometrics Identification Technology Ethics project, said use of biometrics can revive deeply-rooted cultural fears that measuring someone’s body can betray their inner self, such as in the ancient proverb that the eyes are the mirror of the soul.

“This idea is pure metaphysics,” he said, with databases of actions and movements, recorded through the likes of loyalty cards and mobile telephones, being far more potentially intrusive. “But we feel this idea [that biometrics are threatening] is true, which is why we feel biometrics are so intrusive.”

“When policy makers implement biometric systems, they must be aware of this, or they will make disasters,” he added. A connected problem was that reliance on biometrics can disadvantage some groups, such as the elderly who often have harder-to-read fingerprints.

Russ Ryan, vice-president of information and communication for the US National Biometric Security Project, said that privacy fears about biometrics projects can be tackled by keeping personal data and biometric data in separate organisations: “The authenticator has no clue as to who the person is,” he said.

Jim Wayman, director of the biometrics test centre at San Jose state university in California, asked from the audience how the panel would define identity. Phil Booth said his concern was about having his many identities such as a son, a father and a football team supporter collapsed into one official identity.

“Identity is an empty term,” replied Emilio Mordini. He quoted the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, as it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.”

In other words, identifiable objects – particularly humans, as identified by biometrics – have changing, multiple identities, which he described as similar to lines on a graph. “We do not exist. We are the points where the lines cross,” he said.

Fingerprints fail to tackle football ‘hooligans’ (19 October 2007)

Biometrics move from banking to borders (24 August 2007)

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