Perspectives of Biometrics in the Activities of State Agencies Highlights of Symposium Paper by K. Krassowski & I. Sołtyszewski Bratislava, September 2007
Biometrics – the basics New global threats of the post Sept 11 th world require prompt response from the national governments and international organizations. Biometrics have been highly publicized new tool enabling such a response, utilized for both border/human traffic control and personal identification purposes. Biometrics are somewhat fashionable now, while still being quite a new entrant to the identification methods market – therefore appropriate attention needs to be paid in order to evaluate and mitigate all the risks and consequences that may follow widespread application of biometrics in the State activities ( incl. criminal justice system )
Biometrics – practical application Definetly the no. 1 application of biometrics in the State controlled areas is the biometric passport. In Poland since August 2006 all the new passports issued to the citizens are biometric ones – the data stored in those passports is however limited to the digital image of the holder's face ( no fingerprint and/or iris image ). Those passports are meeting the ICAO standards for MRTD's – Machine Readable Travel Documents. The official justification of introduction of biometric data into the passports is crime prevention ( identity theft and false documents ) and compliance with the EU requirements, namely Council Regulation EC 2252/2004
Biometrics – practical application Apart from passports, various EU Member States have been recently experimenting with automated border control systems – major trials in EU's intercontinental hubs like Schiphol, Frankfurt and Heathrow. Of course also one of the most publicized EU initiatives – the Schengen Information System Phase II, Visa Information System and EURODAC are to large extent dependant on the biometric data that is already or will be in future, stored in their databases.
Biometrics – yesterday and today Historicaly speaking, biometrics is a practical science having it's roots in XIXth century, which considers basic rules of changeability of individual features within the population ( results are evaluated by application of mathematical statistics ). Today biometrics have gained the new dimension and meaning within the funcional applications of sophisticated IT systems. At present biometrics should be defined and evaluated on case-by -case basis, through the practical applications of technologies, as many consequences of their utilization are directly dependant on the actual technology standing behind ( e. g. does given application in a given case result in more or less security, better or worst personal privacy )
Pillars of biometric wisdom The EU report EUR 21585 establishes so called pillars of biometric wisdom: Universality - every human being has the same characteristics like iris, face, DNA Distinctiveness – for each person those characteristics are unique Permanence – those characteristics remain largery unchanged thoughouth the life cycle Collectability – they can be collected in reasonably easy manner Performance – the degeree of accuracy of identification is relatively high Acceptability – public support needs to be secured Resistance to circumvention – new systems have to be harder to circumvent than the existing ones Those can be taken as the reference point when considering practical consequences of application of biometrics in the various State related activities.
The critical issues of application of biometrics for State activities are: End user perception – initial fascination in biometrics evolves now into more objective approach and critical consideration of negative consequences – no mass acceptance as of now; Security – the real challenge is how to improve security of individuals while maintaining the security of the biometric data and systems themselves; Safety and medical issues – direct or undirect health risk connected with the application of biometrics are the key public concern and are under investigation; Legal and regulatory aspects – privacy rights, personal data protection, IPR are the leading concerns Standarization – the key to successful development of biometrics and winning public trust.
Things to do Wide application of biometrics for identification purposes both in border control and criminal justice system is lacking proper reflection regarding important aspects concerning overall credibility of the opinions presented by experts on the definitive ( positive or negative ) identification achieved. The examples of fundamental factors that need careful evaluation by the criminalistic science include: Reliability of particular biometric data itself; Reliability of IT systems and applications that are used for data storage, evaluation and matching; Security of the IT systems and applications, including transmission networks ( wired & wireless ); Human factor aspect of biometric data collection, storage, evaluation and access ( errors/conscious actions )
Final thoughts The biometrics indeed seem to have a bright future in the State-related applications. Still, we are just in the initial phase of assessing the weak points of this new prodigy of identification and negative consequences of it's introduction. It is safe to say that over the next couple of years we will be kept busy evaluating this topic – which is not bad at all, now is it ?
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