PRIVACY AND BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY
Privacy and Biometric Technology both the terms are associated with each other. Whenever we are going to discuss biometric technology it becomes necessary to discuss the privacy concerns which are associated with the application of biometric technology. But to understand the issues of privacy in use of biometric technology we need to first understand these terms clearly i.e. what does privacy mean? What is biometric technology? Later in this paper we would be describing how the privacy get affects by the use of biometric technology in detail but first let us understand the privacy.
In simple words privacy is nothing but the ability of a group or an individual to protect his or her information and represent him or her selectively. In general terms privacy can be categorized in four types which are personal privacy, informational privacy, organizational privacy and intellectual or spiritual privacy. Personal privacy is simply related to the body or any other personal information of an individual for example any medical inefficiency etc. Informational privacy is related to the data about an individual or a group. This data could be related to finance, medical, internet and political etc. Organizational privacy is information related to the job or organizations in which an individual works. And intellectual or spiritual privacy is something related to the religion or intellect of a society, a group or an individual (OAIC 2012). When we discuss privacy in association with the biometric technology then we can categorize only it in two categories personal privacy and informational privacy. The details of these two terms will be discussed further.
Biometric technology is the technology which is used to identify a human being by his personal characteristics or we can say traits which are unique. Biometric technology plays an important role in the identification process and access control in computer science. This technology is very helpful in identifying a particular individual in a group if that group is under the surveillance. There are some biometric identifiers used in biometric technology. These identifiers are also categorized as physiological biometrics and behavioral biometric. Physiological biometric mainly includes hand prints, DNA or retina of an individual and on the other hand behavioral biometric includes behavior, voice, typing rhythm etc of an individual. Our concern here is not to discuss the types of privacy or biometric technology but how privacy gets affect while using biometric technology and further the impact of biometric technology on privacy is described (Biometrics 2012).
Before getting into the privacy concerns of biometric technology it is very important to know how it works. In this technology there are some measures captured already and some new measures have been taken; a comparison between both of them is done. Some important unique measures of a person is been taken and at a particular time when identification is required new measures of that person is again taken and compared with the previous data if it match the person gets identified. But there are some problems with the technology as well such as sometimes biometric technology is not able to give exact match between the previously stored data and current data. To solve this problem there is a tolerance range and within that tolerance range both the previous data and current data are very close.
There are some processes which are required to be completed with the biometric measures that have been stored already. These processes mainly include three things: compression, encryption and hashing. Compression is done to reduce the time and cost. With the help of compression a lot of data can be stored in a small space. Compression includes things like arbitrary removal of data, selective removal of data etc. Encryption is done for protecting the data from those people who are trying to access it at the time of transmission. Encryption makes them unable to access the data by intercepting it. And hashing is nothing but mathematical conversion of the data which is done to protect the data from being meaningful to someone who intercepts it in transit. Hashing is also of two type reversible processes and one way hash. All the captured data is stored in a central location or at local place from where it is going to be used. There are also devices made in which the data can be stored and used. These devices are small and easy to carry. The storage of data is done in such a manner that it can be used for a single purpose by a single organization or for multiple purposes by multiple organizations (Biometrics 2012).
Next thing which comes in our mind is what are the uses of all these biometric information? The first and most important use of biometric information is it role in identification. As we already discussed that a new biometric measure is taken and compared against the existing database which contains information about a lot of entities. We can better understand it with the example. The police department of a country generally takes the fingerprints available at the place of crime and then compares it with the already existing fingerprints of many criminals who are a suspect in the crime. Apart from above another use of biometric information is authentication. In simple terms we can say that if a person says that he or she belongs to a particular organization then his or her new measures are taken and matched with the data stored in the organization for that person. If matching result comes positive the person gets authenticated. For example in many organizations today biometric is used for the attendance of the employees which is nothing but authentication that you are the employee of this organization and you can enter into the premises of the company (Condon, S 2008).
With all the above mentioned benefits there are many threats that have come in front of the organizations due to use of biometric technology. The very first threat of the biometric technology is associated with the privacy of the person as collection of the personal information of a particular individual sometimes is not acceptable or accepted by a particular culture or society. Another threat is of privacy of personal data and behavior. Using a biometric technology an organization becomes able to capture the movements of the employees and can describe the behavior of a particular employee. Also the organization can share this information with other organizations or people for example suppliers, distributers or other strategic partners who provide benefits to the organization. In this manner personal behavior of an employee comes in front of many people which become a threat for the person. Other threats due to the use of biometric technology are clash of multipurpose and general purpose identification, rejection of anonymity, permanent identity: theft, automated denial of identity, negative impact on the democracy and freedom of the people and dehumanization. We would be further discussing the privacy threat of using biometric technology further in the paper in detail (Abernathy, W & Tien, L 2003).
Use of biometric technology is highly associated with the privacy of the people. The privacy issues which are raised against the use of biometric technology are sometimes because of fundamental misconception of the processes of the technology. Many times issues are unrelated to the technology as well. Here we are going to discuss all those privacy concerns which are associated with the use of biometric technology. As we have already mentioned in the introduction part of the essay that we can divide privacy issues of biometric technology in two parts which are personal privacy and informational privacy, let us first discuss the personal privacy (Thieme, M n.d.).
There are many segments of people available in a particular country and these segments have their own characteristics. We can also call these segments a society. Every society has different culture, taste, preferences and perception. Biometric technology and its processes are not accepted by many societies sometimes as these processes and the information that the technology captures is not either allowed to give by the society or the society doesn’t prefer it. Giving personal information to someone is distasteful or embarrassing for many people. Also it is very difficult to know the percentage of people for who use of biometric technology is restricted or problematic. In both the cases mentioned above, legislation cannot solve the fear related to the privacy problem of the people. Also the design of system cannot be done according to the requirements of the people. Their fear of privacy can be solved partially with the help of campaigns or by creating awareness about the technology and its benefits. The availability of these kinds of segments is really very harmful for the technological development and benefits of the system. Solutions of such problems are highly recommended (Thieme, M n.d.).
Next privacy issue is of informational privacy. Informational privacy is not related to the individual characteristics of people but it is more related to the processes that are involved in the biometric technology implementation and application. Many times the information collected in the biometric technology is not with the consent of the person whose information is being taken. Generally people are not aware of the system and they do not know what information these processes are gathering; which creates difficulties in front of the person to become ready for the process. In biometric processes many times additional information is taken which are not necessary and this kind of unnecessary information collection can become a reason for the unauthorized use of the biometric information. Unauthorized uses of the biometric information are the greatest threat to the privacy of the people. The intended use of the information collected in the biometric technological processes is not that much problematic but there unauthorized uses become a big problem. Examples of unauthorized uses of biometric information can be forensic uses or uses as unique identifier (Greene, T, C 2001).
In forensic uses fingerprints of the people are provided to the specific organizations like police department and others for public benefits. Obviously this kind of exposure to personal information of a person will not be accepted easily. Hence it is understood that the records kept in the central location of the biometric technology could be used for police searches and other public and private benefits which creates a negative impact of the technology in the mind of people. Next threat is of use of biometric information as a unique identifier i.e. the person’s daily activities can be traced with the help of biometric information. Obviously a person will never accept that he or she is being looked by someone. Unique identifiers have become a big danger today as everything today is based on databases such modern systems in the organizations, services of public and private sector or financial transactions. And linking with the database and gathering information has become very easy (Greene, T, C 2001).
There are other privacy problems like unauthorized disclosure to the information and its unauthorized uses. A person has fears that he will lose control over his personal information and that information can be used according to the requirements. To achieve the benefits of biometrics technology there should be some processes which can protect the personal information of the people from unauthorized uses. There should be some privacy – sympathetic system design and procedural protections for the prevention of information from unauthorized disclosure (Thieme, M n.d.).
In conclusion we can say that there are several benefits of biometric technology but it has become a threat for privacy of the people as well. Biometric technology is a technology of surveillance and that is why it has become a serious issue today. With the help of surveillance information about any person whose biometric information is already stored can be captured very easily and it can even capture the daily movement of the person. The countries which are free will have problems in the implementation of the biometric technology but those which are authoritarian will successfully implement it and hence will reduce the freedom of the society. The other side of this technology is that the organization which will provide this technology to the governments and other agencies of a country will flourish. The confidence of public in the government and other private organizations will get lowered and there would be a scenario of more powerful organizations and less powerful individual (Clarke, R 2001).
The other scenario is that the organizations which are providing this these technologies and the societies which are accepting and using it must understand the seriousness of the threats and try to get some alternatives of the protection of information. There should be some constraints imposed on the use of the technology. But to have these alternatives commitment from the public and societies are required. They need to stand against the public and private corporations so that there could be some solutions achieved to reduce the threat of privacy. Government agencies and private organizations are moving very fast and once the technology will get implemented then the scope of getting solutions of the privacy problems will get reduced. It is up to the society and people whose information is being taken; how they want their information to be used (Clarke, R 2001).
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