ThirdFactor | Privacy concerns grow with government biometric adoption

Friday, September 25, 2009

New Zealand’s recent moves towards biometric protection at their borders has some privacy advocates fearing that similar power and technological capabilities will be extended to other areas of the government for use domestically, according to a TVNZ article.

The technology that New Zealand has put into place allows Australian and New Zealand citizen’s travel between the two countries quicker via a biometric passport and smart gates at security checkpoints that compare the biometric information on the passport with that of the individual traveling.

The major fears stem from New Zealand joining the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia to work together on managing entry visas. While the rest of the countries have agreed to share biometric information with each other, New Zealand has not yet made that agreement.

Many worry that the information shared could breach privacy for individual citizens as there are little details in place about how the information will be shared as well as what information is to be shared.

Read the full story here.

After long delays, Algeria launches biometric passports

After a nearly three-year delay, the Algerian government has finally launched its biometric passport program.

Magharebia reports that the biometric passports, which contain a contactless smart card chip that holds a digitized photo, fingerprints and signature, were supposed to be released in 2009. But the documents were delayed due to complexities with the operation of the project and the need to thoroughly research and analyze other countries’ experiences with biometric passports.

Concerns mount over new Canadian biometric programs

Privacy advocates in Canada have been raising concerns over the risk involved in two new biometric programs from the government that result in the sharing of private biometric data with other countries’ governments and possibly private corporations, according to an Embassy Magazine article.

FTC wants comments on facial recognition

Federal Trade Commission staff is seeking public comments on the issues raised at a FTC workshop exploring facial recognition technology and the privacy and security implications raised by its increasing use.

Privacy: Protecting personal details

Jerome Becquart, Chair of the GlobalPlatform Government Task Force, and Eric Le Saint, Chair of the GlobalPlatform Systems Committee

With more and more transaction and interaction becoming electronic, privacy concerns are on the increase. This is especially true in the context of government-to-citizen and government-to-employee transactions.

Israeli database breach raises fears over security of other national databases

The news that Israeli authorities arrested the man they believe was behind the 2006 theft and subsequent leaking of the biometric and biographical data of up to 9 million Israelis contained on their national database has renewed worry of similar issues coming up in other countries where biometric databases continue to grow, according to a Fast Company article.

New biometric policies go into effect in New Zealand

New Zealand’s government has passed legislation to enable Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to store photos of all non-New Zealanders entering the country as well as require fingerprint samples in some circumstances.

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Privacy concerns grow with government biometric adoption