Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, biometrics research was geared mostly to convenience like retail transactions and employee access to buildings. That has shifted toward security and anti-terror measures -- and raised privacy concerns.
"Maybe it's the events of 9/11 or maybe it is our experience with the information age that is making people approach biometrics carefully," said Lisa Nelson, attorney and professor at the graduate school of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
"If biometrics are implemented incorrectly, or without a lot of thought, there will be huge consequences, not only for the industry, but also for the legislators who are facilitating the use of biometric technology," she said.
Nelson said it is critical that legal safeguards keep pace with the technological advances in biometrics. And she said it probably won't be rolled out on a wide scale unless there is increased public acceptance of using fingerprints, eye scans, or voice recognition technologies.
"I don't see it as being a panacea. I see it as another layer of protection, and therein is the strength of it," said Nelson.
The most common "Big Brother" fears and concerns parallel the types of questions people first asked when they had to decide whether to put their credit card numbers on an e-commerce site on the Internet: Who has access to my information?
If a shopper gives a fingerprint to a department store to pay her bills, she wants to be sure that it's not being accessed by other merchants or government agencies.
"What we teach is that there should never be third party use of the data," said West Virginia University's Hornak. "You have an arrangement using your biometric to acquire some service from that second party, and that's the only place that information is retained."
Because human bodies change constantly, a palm scan or a facial geometry scan never match perfectly. So deciding where to set the bar is critical.
"The question is, What is the cost of making an error?" said Arun Ross, assistant professor of computer science at West Virginia University.
"What is the cost of falsely admitting an impostor? If I'm falsely rejected, maybe I'm going to be upset for a couple of seconds, and I could just place my finger again. But if it is a false accept, you just let the wrong person into the nuclear facility," Ross said.
Privacy watchdog groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation also urge caution.
"You can change a password, you can re-key a lock, but your fingers, your iris, your voice, they're you. So when someone compromises the security of that kind of biometric, you're stuck," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at EFF.
"Our feeling is that it's just not ready for prime time right now. There are a lot of applications where it can be used, but they tend to be small scale. But if you want security and any kind of a high volume application, it's probably not going to be very effective," he said.
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Anything from the list from large to small would be appreciated.
