From the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:
Canadians are witnessing a growing interest among government and private-sector organizations in adopting systems that use biometric characteristics to automatically identify people or verify their identity. But whether a fingertip, a face or an iris is being scanned, what’s being collected is personal information about an identifiable individual.
And that makes it our interest too.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has prepared this primer on biometrics and the systems that use them. It also describes some of the privacy implications raised by this emerging field, as well as measures to mitigate the risks.
Data at Your Fingertips: Biometrics and the Challenges to Privacy (pdf)