Biometric Recognition Challenges and Opportunities (2010) / Chapter Skim
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4 Cultural, Social, and Legal Considerations
4 Cultural, Social, and Legal Considerations
Pages 85-115
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From page 85... ...
Who benefits at whose expense and the relative balance between benefits and costs can influence the success of biometric deployments. The efficacy of a biometric system can be affected by the cultural, social, and legal considerations that shape the way in which people engage and interact with these systems.
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From page 86... ...
This chapter explores such considerations in four areas: biometric systems and individual participation, potential impacts on society of bio metric systems, legal considerations with respect to biometrics, and data collection and use policies. INTERACTION BETWEEN BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS AND INDIVIDUALS System performance may be degraded if social factors are not adequately taken into consideration.
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From page 87... ...
Because the use of biometric systems depends on physical connections with individuals and because they are used for national security, law enforcement, social services, and so on, a host of societal issues should be addressed before they are deployed. Facilitating Individual Participation The adoption of biometric systems depends on the ease with which people can use them.
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From page 88... ...
Motiva tions of operators might range from speeding up the check-in process to protecting personal information to preventing terrorism. Discussions of usability tend to focus on narrow technical considerations such as the adequacy of the instructions for where and how to place the hand or finger to successfully engage with a biometric system (some of this was discussed briefly in the section "Operational Context" in Chapter 2)
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From page 89... ...
3 Biometric systems' close connection to an individual, as described in the preceding section, means that even extremely effective technical solutions may turn out to be inappropriate due to perceived or actual side effects and means that proportionality -- both how the system will be perceived in its user communities as well as possible side effects, even if the system is accurate and robust -- must be considered when first examining the solution space. The rest of this section explores some of those potential side effects, including potential disenfranchisement of nonparticipants, privacy issues, and impact of varying cultural perspectives on individuality and identity.
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From page 90... ...
Almost no popular discussion of biometric technologies and systems takes place without reference to privacy concerns, surveillance potential, and concerns about large data bases of personal information being put to unknown uses. Privacy issues arise in a cultural context and have implications for individuals and soci ety even apart from those that arise in legal and regulatory contexts.
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From page 91... ...
Linking such information -- however imperfectly -- in order to form profiles of individuals is also routinely done for purposes ranging from commercial marketing to law enforcement. The biometric data stored in information systems have the potential of becoming yet another avenue through which records within a system or across systems might be linked.
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From page 92... ...
To date, widespread use of covert identification appears to be confined to movie plots. Contrary to popular belief, for example, the surveil lance cameras used to investigate the 2005 London bombings did not perform biometric recognition as described in this report, because the cameras produced video searched by humans, not by machine.
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From page 93... ...
The Walt Disney World entrance gate application of biometrics described in Appendix D creates an affinity group for the people entering the park using a set of tickets purchased at the same time. This association of the tickets to the group avoids unnecessary complication at the admission gate and reflects the common social context for ticket use without unduly weakening the value of biometric recognition.
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From page 94... ...
These issues apply beyond biometrics research, but biometric recognition's close association to individual bodies and notions of identity will inevitably heighten participants' sensitivity to the issues and necessitate that they be addressed with special care. In addition to the identity issues raised by cultural considerations and role-based agency and the challenges of research on socially identifiable groups, biometric technologies explore the boundary between public and private information about an individual's body.
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From page 95... ...
Department of Motor Vehicles (California Supreme Court, 1986)
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From page 96... ...
In any particular setting, biometrics may or may not ensure the confidence needed for the system to be useful. The reliability of biometric recognition has received considerable attention for many years.
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From page 97... ...
. The use of biometric evidence in court is a subset of the field of forensics; it concerns "the application of the natural and physical sciences to the resolution of conflicts within a legal context." See David L
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From page 98... ...
The pros ecutor might, for example, want to use an expert on voice analysis who has studied an incriminating phone conversation with a novel biometric technique and wants to offer her opinion that the voice on the phone is most likely that of the defendant. In our legal system the judge performs a gatekeeper function: He or she decides whether the expert testimony is sufficiently reliable to be pre sented to the jury.
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From page 99... ...
Of course, when an expert witness testifies and a rival expert is called to rebut, the ensuing battle of the experts may not be helpful for the jury or for society. In a survey conducted by the Federal Judicial Center, judges frequently complained about experts who "abandon objectivity 22 Frye .
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From page 100... ...
Polygraph evidence, for example, is generally denied admission in court31 while DNA evidence is generally admitted.32 Finally, the legal system will likely never render a verdict on biometric evidence as a whole. As one would expect, and hope, each type of evidence will be evaluated on its own when a judge exercises his or her gatekeeper function and when a jury performs its ultimate decisionmaking role.
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From page 101... ...
His appeal, contending the Nevada law violated his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, ultimately reached the Supreme Court. A five-member majority of the Court affirmed Hiibel's conviction.
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From page 102... ...
would have to decide whether to authorize their law enforcement officials to use facial recognition tech nology in this way. In states that do allow the technology, adversely affected individuals could still go to court and argue that their constitutional rights had been violated.
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From page 103... ...
. The possible loss of privacy posed by auto mated facial recognition technology may or may not be outweighed by possibly better law enforcement.
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From page 104... ...
Others are more likely to see Justice Stevens's world, where facial recognition databases cast a wide net to ensnare people stopped without probable cause. The reliability of a biometric system, such as the facial recognition system hypothesized here, is obviously relevant to this inquiry.
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From page 105... ...
Is there any constitutional requirement that this limit be abided by? The Supreme Court has not answered this question, although it has suggested that a state might violate due process if it does not take reasonable steps to stop unwarranted disclosures of data.
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From page 106... ...
Once inside Kyllo's home, federal agents found more than a hundred marijuana plants. Kyllo, who was eventually convicted of manufacturing marijuana, appealed on the ground that using a thermal imager without probable cause constituted an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.
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From page 107... ...
Roe, Justice Stevens spoke of the threat to privacy posed by "massive government files."43 But what about information held in private hands? Many Americans are just as concerned or even more so about the loss of privacy when personal information is given to their employer or demanded in an online private transaction.
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From page 108... ...
, but it declined to revisit Katz in the setting of the thermal imaging of a private home. The Court also recognized that changing societal expec tations of privacy affect Fourth Amendment rights under the Katz approach.
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From page 109... ...
: The ability to "see" through walls and other opaque barriers is a clear, and scientifi cally feasible, goal of law enforcement research and development. The National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center, a program within the United States Department of Justice, features on its Internet Website projects that include a "Radar Based Through-the-Wall Surveillance System," "Handheld Ultrasound Through the Wall Surveillance," and a "Radar Flashlight" that "will enable law enforcement officers to detect individuals through interior building walls." The four dissenting justices believed that Danny Kyllo had no reasonable expectation of privacy in heat emissions that were being sensed after they had left his house.
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From page 110... ...
found that personal information held by the private sector is afforded weaker statutory protec tions than information held by the federal or state governments and that much detailed personal information in the hands of businesses is available for reuse and resale to private third parties or to the government, with little in the way of legal standards or procedural protections. 45 Illinois passed such a law in 2008 (740 ILCS 14/)
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From page 111... ...
For the most part, they apply to biometric recognition systems. The questions are reprinted for reference.48 • What is the purpose of the system?
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From page 112... ...
Information-Sharing Issues With increased use of biometrics, there is legitimate concern about how information stored in biometric databases might be shared. Sharing can extend the administrative reach of biometric findings.
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From page 113... ...
The costs of electronically capturing biometric samples and storing the data continue to drop, as do the costs of data integration and dissemination, and the technical ability to do so is expanding as well, serving to increase interest in storing biometric information in databases. The ben efits of storage capacity and data integration and sharing could include the following: • Administratie efficiencies.
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From page 114... ...
This is in spite of the fact that if biometric data associated with an individual falls into the wrong hands that individual could be at risk of identity theft.52 Moreover, sharing of information from biometric databases raises questions of (1) whether the information would be used for purposes not intended or inconsistent with the purposes of the original biometric application and (2)
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From page 115... ...
In these circumstances, one would not expect a biometric recognition system to provide reliable protection against a premeditated attack. SUMMARY Although biometric systems can be beneficial, the potentially lifelong association of biometric traits with an individual, their potential use for remote detection, and their connection with identity records may raise social, cultural, and legal concerns.
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