11
votes
Fifty countries ranked by how they’re collecting biometric data and what they’re doing with it
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Biometric data collection by country: What's collected, how is it used?
- Published
- Dec 4 2019
- Word count
- 3350 words
From the article:
I suspect that most U.S. citizens would be startled to learn that the U.S. is in the company of China, Malaysia, and Pakistan when it comes to ubiquity and lack of privacy in biometric data collection.
Given the data and description this article has for Ireland, I am somewhat sceptical of its rigour, particularly as it highlights the country as having the best score in its analysis. It appears that the analysis may rely on uncritical readings of official government statements.
Thank you for investigating. I suspect the statistics elide many of those details simply because it's too difficult to make equivalent comparisons among all the different types of national ID and immigration control systems surveyed.
That would make sense, to some extent, though it risks meaning that countries which are more transparent about biometrics are penalized for the transparency.
However, in the case of the UK and Ireland, fingerprints are required for long-term visas for both, but the UK is penalized for this while Ireland is not. This is a rather direct comparison.
This is really scary shit in the long run. I recommend the book Data Dictatorships for the full picture of where we could be heading.
Nice article, decent attempt to quantify this trend.
But more broadly, nice website. Thanks for the find.
I feel im missing what is wrong with biometrics. You are who you are, biometrics are basically just confirming who you are. Like biometrics with a passport ensures you are the person the id says you are.
I don't doubt there are bad things about it but I find it hard to see things that wouldn't be your own fault.
The Electronic Freedom Federation has an extensive library on the risks of biometric data collection and its abuse.
Governments are already using this data for intrusive surveillance and totalitarian control. You can't change your biometric measurements, at least without extreme measures. If that data is mishandled, corrupted, leaked, or abused for criminal purposes, you may never be able to recapture your own identity signifiers.
In the absence of proper legal frameworks for handling biometric information, especially with DNA databases, you may have no intellectual property or other rights to your own data, and also face the prospect of discrimination.
I'm a little frightened that "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" styled arguments still have traction here. The governments practicing this kind of surveillance are already operating as if they presume anyone could be guilty of anything at any time.
Put simply, after you get hacked or ID-thefted, you can always change your password, make a new account, block your credit card and get a new one, etc. Biometrics are for life. Even if you 100% implicitly trust your govt-of-choice's intentions ... sooner or later, Everyone gets hacked.
Part of the deal is that biometrics aren't fakeable except by extremely sophisticated and expensive methods. So if your biometrics get spoofed, it would actually be easier to find and capture the person who spoofed them rather than to change everything that's reliant on it for authentication.
Also, ideally, you'd use the biometric as the second factor in a multi-factor authenticator. So it would be like a PIN or password on top of your biometric.
Please spend 10 minutes and read this article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
Notably the arguments for and against.