Where is our biometric information?

The growing use of biometric information raises a number of questions. For example, one thing is the information that we memorize and that can be replaced if needs be, and quite another is information that is inextricably linked to us, such as our iris, fingerprints, or DNA.

The growing use of fingerprint identification for smartphones (half of all devices will have them by 2019) is already creating problems: everything suggests that for the moment Apple has handled this better than Android, which is currently tied up in a dispute over an upcoming Black Hat presentation that shows how to hack into Samsung, Huawei, and HTC phones to extract the fingerprint data of their owners.

At the same time, an industry is taking shape to collect and sell this type of data for security purposes, and that is much simpler and with fewer entry barriers than ever in a world in which this type of technology is expensive, complex, or non-existent. Anybody who has been through US Immigration will know that our fingerprint data and our facial biometrics are in a series of data bases, but we don’t know what is being done with this data.

A joint initiative by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and MuckRock, a collaborative site for journalists and the wider public that provides access to government documents, is looking into these kinds of questions: taking advantage of the right of every US citizen to know what information about them is in the hands of the government, aims to create a map of what five kinds of data are being used for: fingerprints, facial recognition, eye scans, rapid DNA testing, and tattoo identification. The initiative allows a person to ask for the data held by a specific entity, and the idea is to create greater transparency in the way the state uses our information.

Security and tracking are issues that go way beyond monitoring what we get up to on the internet (here’s another interesting tool, introduced today). Identifying ourselves with our fingerprint to use our smartphone is convenient, safe, and comfortable, in the same way that CCTV in some public places can make us feel more secure. But when these recognition systems fail, allowing our information to be burgled, or that CCTV used to monitor people who aren’t suspected of any wrongdoing, things change. A world in which these kinds of technology are increasingly easier to use requires a new approach based on transparency, and will likely require fighting hard for.

(En español, aquí)