Biometrics systems are used to identify or authenticate identity by using innate physical or behavioral characteristics, including fingerprints, face and palm prints, iris patterns, voice, gait, breath, and DNA. The argument for its use is that by tying digital IDs to biometrics, authorities can largely remove the risk of fraud and identity theft, an issue that’s recently come up with vaccine passports in France and elsewhere.
Biometric technologies are already being used in diverse settings, from banks and other financial institutions to schools and workplaces. UK global bank Standard Chartered has rolled out fingerprint and other biometric technologies across many of the African and Asian markets in which it operates, as part of a $1.5 billion technology investment package. Mexican banks have collected biometric data (fingerprints and iris scans) on all their customers. Passports around the world have included biometric features for years, as have other forms of IDs. Many people opt to sign into their mobile phones using their biometric data.
Children are also being conditioned to use biometric systems, sometimes for the most mundane of reasons. In Scotland, for example, a number of schools in 2021 began using facial recognition to expedite school lunch lines. The local council in North Ayrshire said that the new technology allowed for a faster lunch service while removing the need for any contact at the point of sale: “With Facial Recognition, pupils simply select their meal, look at the camera and go, making for a faster lunch service whilst removing any contact at the point of sale.”1
Similar facial recognition systems have been in use in the United States for years, though usually as a security measure. In the case of the schools in Ayrshire, the rationale is ease, speed, and efficiency, but critics argue that these pilot schemes have a much darker purpose than expediting school lunch queues; they are about conditioning children to the widespread use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies.
Stephanie Hare, author of Technology Ethics, argues that the widespread use of these technologies is normalizing children to understand “their bodies as something they use to transact. That’s how you condition an entire society to use facial recognition.”
In the end, North Ayrshire council decided to shelve its pilot scheme after parents and data ethics experts raised concerns that the privacy implications may not have been fully considered.2 There has also been pushback from citizens in the United States on the use of facial recognition in schools. In New York, public opposition was so strong that the state government ended up halting all use of biometric identifying technology in schools until at least July 2022.
San Francisco-based digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation says that biometric systems pose “extreme risks” to privacy and the security of personal data:
The government insists that biometrics databases can be used effectively for border security, to verify employment, to identify criminals, and to combat terrorism. Private companies argue biometrics can enhance our lives by helping us to identify our friends more easily and by allowing us access to places, products, and services more quickly and accurately. But the privacy risks that accompany biometrics databases are extreme.