The independent and international impartial Biometrics Institute representing users, vendors and researchers in the biometric field has warned Governments that extra care must be taken when Governments use children’s biometrics for border protection and other purposes.
The Biometrics Institute which began in Australia but is now the chief independent biometrics body in the world was presenting evidence before last week’s Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee hearings in Sydney, Australia.
The Biometrics Institute said that Governments needed to understand that there were technical and privacy issues related to the use of biometrics with young people.
The Biometrics Institute’s Head of the Privacy Expert Group, Terry Aulich, said: “the Institute understands the need to ensure that those young people entering Australia as refugees or immigrants are treated with respect for their privacy and human rights. Some may have no papers and therefore need a unique identity such as that provided by biometrics like fingerprints, facial scans or iris scans.”
He agreed with the Chairman Senator MacDonald that biometrics were a significant weapon against terrorism and fraud.
In its submission, the Biometrics Institute’s Chief Executive, Isabelle Moeller, outlined: “the latest Migration Bill proposed by the Government needs to take into account the fact that research showed that biometrics work less accurately on young people whose bodies are not fully developed. This could lead to false accepts or rejects and cause major problems where border control authorities have an unjustified confidence in the 100% accuracy of biometric enrolments or scanning.”
Mr Aulich advised the Senate Committee to closely examine the International Standardistation Organisation’s draft document ISO/IEC PDTR 30110.2 about biometrics and children and other research into the use of biometrics for children. The Biometrics Institute provided a number of references to those documents. This would help Governments to ensure that their legislation took into account the latest technology views about children and biometrics as well as international privacy principles, many aspects of which are already contained in the Biometrics Institute’s privacy Guidelines.
The Biometrics Institute is running a range of events during 2015 which all will include the topic of data protection and trust. They include the Asia-Pacific Conference 2015, 27-28 May 2015 in Sydney and Biometrics 2015: Secure identity solutions, 13-15 October 2015 in London. A full event listing can be found at http://www.biometricsinstitute.org/events.php.
The Biometrics Institute is the independent and impartial international forum for biometrics users and other interested parties with currently over 180 member organisations including government departments, financial services institutions, health service providers and also vendors of biometric products and services.
It has been established to promote the responsible use of biometrics technologies.
The Biometrics Institute has offices in Australia and the UK.
SOURCE: Biometrics Institute