Your file, sorry Passort, please

BY JOSEPH QUINN

Taken from the Greek 'bios' (life), and 'metrikos' (measure), biometrics is the measure of life. Recently, this measure of people's life has increasingly been publicised in terms of security and has encountered scepticism from privacy advocates and the general public.

The definition of privacy is different for everyone, but it contains the core value of wanting to know who has access to your personal information and for what purpose.

A security guard studying your face at an office entrance does not raise privacy concerns and if you had your fingerprint or iris scanned, this would not necessarily raise privacy concerns.

Where worries about privacy arise is around fears as to where that data is stored or sent and who can access it. The threat of invasion of privacy is not one of positive identification but rather the ability of third parties to access this information without consent.

The five main Biometric Technologies are:

Fingerprint: A scanner reads the ridge patterns and compares the converted code with those on a database.

Facial scanning: A camera with appropriate software records face contours and converts them into code. A computer processes the data and checks against stored record.

Hand Geometry: The scanner will map the size and shape of a person's hand and then compare this to records on a database.

Iris imaging: Software scans a digital image of the iris to compare its unique pattern with all those stored.

Vein-pattern: An infrared image of a person's vein pattern is taken and verification is again done in a similar way to facial scanning.

Biometric Uses

Human society works on an identification process. This process is becoming more and more advanced. Irish/European Passports contain personal information and a photograph. This document in its own right is extremely sophisticated and difficult to counterfeit.

However, since 9/11 the US Government has forced the European Union to comply with its biometric passport demands. Simply put, in the very near future people seeking to renew passports will be asked for a fingerprint, iris scan and facial scan. This information will be entered into a supposedly secure system that can be accessed worldwide by only authorised people (in an ideal world without corrupt police forces and customs, this system would certainly be stronger).

And if this amount of personal information, along with a record of your movements, wasn't worrying enough, the US Government has recently introduced plans to have RFID technology embedded in passports. RFID is an embedded radio-tag chip that can be read at a distance (up to 50 feet) without the need of contact. The idea is that when 'Joe' goes through customs with his passport, the customs personnel can read his information with greater ease.

But it would also, for example, potentially allow someone passing your hotel room to know where your passport is and the information on it and therefore, whether or not you are worth kidnapping. US State Department spokesperson Angela Aggeler insists "it won't be possible to read the chips in passports with just any old reader". Umm, so it will take special readers that, of course, the bad guys won't have. Reassured yet?

Beneficiaries

In January of this year, the US Government put an approximately $20 billion biometric contract out to tender. This is just the first step in a worldwide biometric system, one that is sure to make the successful bidders very rich. The US Homeland Security contract is likely to be the first of many. "The market for biometrics is enormous, for reasons well beyond the US," says Jane's Information Group analyst Chris Yates.

Governments that implement such a system will be able to track every citizen in modern day society. One of the main reasons it has been impossible for the US to track down Osama Bin Laden is that he doesn't give his biometric details to anyone, doesn't use a credit card or have a mobile phone. Because government bodies focus on creating a database from electronic data and knowing everything you do, they are forgetting about traditional investigation methods to crime. If you want to be a normal citizen, who is not on a database, then follow the example of Osama, but then again, that is the sort of person they want this system to catch.

Future for Privacy

Before 9/11, the public's concerns and opinions over Big Brother were quite clear — they didn't want it. However, since 9/11 many governments are riding on the wave of people's fears about security and think that the implementation of a rushed biometric system will solve all their problems.

Rushing this system will only cause more problems and ultimately lead to a public backlash. The British Government had proposed to introduce a compulsory national identity card that would contain similar biometric information to the new US spec passports. Strangely, after trials with up to a 10% recognition failure rate and when cost implementation and risk considerations were assessed together; they decided to opt for a voluntary system.

Biometric technology is very secure, but the bottom line is that there are very real privacy concerns in relation to who has access to people's most personal information.

McDonald Rejects Biometric Data on Passports

Last week, Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald voted in the European Parliament against a report calling for the use of biometrics in passports for citizens of EU member states.

Sinn Féin rejects the general idea of introducing biometric identifiers in identity documents for several reasons, McDonald explained:

"Firstly, we are seriously concerned about huge risks to data protection and privacy in what will be extremely large databases. Risks in storage, access to and transmission of data are not resolved, dangers of identity theft and abuse remain even if the data is only stored on a chip. Problems with multiple identities, interception of data transmissions and pro-active policing continue to exist. Biometric systems are never 100% accurate, even fingerprints will not be precise on several hundred thousand people in the EU.

"Secondly, the proposal violates all common standards of appropriateness and subsidiarity. Until now, neither the Commission nor the Council have adequately explained the necessity, functionality, efficiency and probable side effects of including biometric identifiers in identity documents. They have not even provided detailed figures of the expected costs nor proposed a clear budget!

"Finally, biometrics do not increase security, because they don't link a person to a real identity, only to an identity established by an identity document. If the passport is false, however, the biometric identifier included on it can't change this.

"Sinn Féin will continue to vigorously oppose this flagrant breach of citizens' civil liberties. As part of this, we opposed today's report."