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.
Among such massive databases are India’s UID database that will eventually house biometric and biographical data of its nearly 1 billion citizens and an FBI database being built that will house and share the biometric and biographical data collected by police agencies around the country.
Despite the fact that the Israeli offender was a former government employee who aimed to make money by selling the data to identity thieves, many fear that hostile countries or nefarious hackers could just as easily gain access to the databases for their own ends.
This has been more prominent in the U.S. where the FBI has been mum on the details of how they are securing the databases and other government biometric databases have been found to have a number of privacy concerns through the Department of Homeland Security’s privacy impact assessment.
Despite this governments continue to move forward with plans for various biometric databases as the promise for increased security levels and improved processes that result in savings.
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