Biometrics – a new era of identity
Amid
controversy surrounding international travel and national security –
stories of baggage tampering, Australian residents being wrongfully
detained or deported and a general “atmos-fear” of terrorism – the
Federal Government has just announced more funding for developing
biometric technology for identity verification and border security.
National identity has been put in the spotlight in more ways than one.
So what is biometrics? How does it work and what will it mean for the
average Australian? Emma Masters reports.
Biometrics is technology that measures a person’s unique physical characteristics – from fingerprints and face structure, an iris or DNA.
Once science fiction, like in James Bond movies where eyes were scanned to grant access into secure rooms, biometrics is now a reality and governments and businesses are considering adopting the technology in everything from border security to banking.
UniSA computer and information sciences researcher, Professor Paul Swatman, said that despite the sophistication of biometric technology it may in the end be social factors that limit its uses. He and a group of international colleagues have been looking at evolving attitudes in Europe about using biometric ID cards or passports.
“Biometrics is a very accurate and high level form of security compared to the others types we use today, such as photos and pin numbers, and that makes it especially favourable for border control where governments want a system to be as accurate as possible,” Prof Swatman said.
“But there are other common forms of resistance to change. People are concerned about the intrusiveness of biometrics. For example, I ask myself how my granny would feel about having her irises scanned when she goes to the bank. Then there are privacy concerns.”
In Australia, the government has been seriously investigating biometrics for many years. In July 2004, Australian Customs completed an 18 month trial where Qantas crew travelling through Sydney International Airport could use face recognition technology to register with customs. Just before the Sydney trial ended, the Federal Government committed $10 million to expand the system to Melbourne. In May this year the government made its strongest commitment to developing biometric technology, setting aside $185.7 million over four years.
The national system on trial is called SmartGate. Users approach a SmartGate stand (pictured), place their passport on the reader and look at a camera on the stand. A photo is then verified against electronic images stored on the passport. Less intrusive than having irises scanned, and a technology that is said to be more reliable than fingerprints, SmartGate performs a face-to-passport check in around 10 seconds.
So for Australians beginning to think about participating in a biometric passport system, where does their attitude to the technology come from? What is the price of convenience?
To demonstrate the effectiveness of their research approach, Swatman’s team analysed five years of newspaper articles on the adoption of the mobile phone and the internet. Once satisfied with the effectiveness of the approach, the team applied it to the question of biometric IDs in America and a range of European and Asian countries. They found three main concepts dominating public debate. They were the benefit the innovation offered, the associated loss of personal privacy, and security.
“Though the detail of the debate differed significantly from country to country, observing social attitudes to ubiquitous ICT innovations, the public debate has basically been about loss of privacy versus utility and benefits. But with something like September 11, you get a huge burst where privacy doesn’t really seem to matter all that much and national security is the important thing. 9/11 has been one of the main triggers for governments to push for biometrics in ID systems.
“Interestingly, it seems that something like 9/11 has less long term impact on public perceptions than you might think. In comparison, for example, when the internet first became commercially visible in the mid 90s we saw regular stories in the press about people having their credit card numbers ripped off. These stories seem to have had a much longer term impact than 9/11, where we saw a steep immediate focus on national security followed by a steady return of privacy to centre stage.”
Prof Swatman says that it is not necessarily the use of SmartGate’s facial recognition in customs that will be a real problem for people, it’s the sense of overloading that raises more complex issues.
“One issue that became clear very quickly was that when governments thought about investing money in biometric ID card systems, there was considerable incentive to overload the services linked to the ID card, extending its use to drivers’ licences, medical, social, tax and criminal records,” he said.
“Many officials we spoke to said, ‘if we had this, we could reduce welfare fraud, identify tax rorts’ and so forth. While some of these ideas are harder to implement in practice than you might immediately think, it is easy to see the attractiveness to governments and commercial organisations of being able to build very detailed pictures of people from a range of sources – linked by a unique identifier.”
It is such privacy issues that make civil libertarians cringe. Another concern raised is that facial recognition can be done remotely.
“At first we thought intrusiveness would be the most significant issue, but if the ID card is readable remotely then identity checking and recording could be done without people even knowing it was happening. In a world with increasing numbers of surveillance cameras, there is massive potential for concern,” Prof Swatman said.
“Obviously you can protect privacy in different ways – by passing laws, through technology and work practices – but there is no complete solution.
“The process of selling the idea to the population is quite a difficult one because individuals make decisions and form their attitudes based on information they absorb, ultimately sourced from many different organisations and lobby groups through the media. So the major hurdle which governments face will be education and information.
“Here in Australia, some years ago, we saw extensive public concern
expressed over the proposed introduction of the Australia Card. Community
perception ensured that proposal was shelved – though we do have the tax
file number which, in many ways, has a similar effect. We can expect similar
extensive public debate over biometric IDs.”