December 08, 2003
Biometrics - Sooner Than We Thought
Biometrics: High-tech security systems that rely on detailed measurements of the human body, known as biometrics, are taking off. But should they be?
An article in the Science Technology Quarterly in the Economist offers an interesting review of the pros and cons of biometric testing. It is inevitable that we will be using more of this kind of security and there are new incentives on a global level to implement biometrics. For example, "America will begin using biometrics at its airports and seaports on January 5th. Under the new US-VISIT programme, all foreigners entering on visas will have their hands and faces digitally scanned. This will create what Tom Ridge, America's homeland-security supremo, calls 'an electronic check-in and check-out system for foreign nationals'. American citizens will also be affected, as new passports with a chip that contains biometric data are issued from next year. And the new rules specify that by October 26th 2004, all countries whose nationals can enter America without a visa'including western European countries, Japan and Australia'must begin issuing passports that contain biometric data too. Moves to create a European standard for biometric passports are already under way, and many other countries are following suit: Oman and the United Arab Emirates, among others, will begin issuing national identity cards containing biometrics next year. Britain's planned new national identity card will also include biometrics."
But the article points out "it is not clear that these identity-verification systems are worth the cost and trouble of introducing them. All 19 of the September 11th hijackers entered the United States using valid visas, on their own passports, for example. Verifying their identities using biometric visas would have made no difference." Recent reports from groups such as the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of America's Congress, and America's National Academy of Science (NAS), point out that, while the political environment has changed, the technology has not. Biometrics still do not work well enough to be effective for many of the applications in which they are now being deployed.
Here is a chart of the current technologies implemented.
The article ends with a discussion of privacy - "in the long term, biometrics, by their very nature, will compromise privacy in a deep and thorough fashion." Spurred by the misplaced enthusiasm of governments around the world, biometrics seem headed for dramatic growth in the next few years. But calm, public discussion of their benefits and drawbacks has been lamentably lacking. Such discussion is necessary both to prevent the waste of public money in the short term' for the most part, the private sector has been wiser in its adoption of biometrics'but also to regulate what will eventually have the potential to become a powerful mechanism for social control.