The Utilization of Biometric Technology and Privacy Issues

Developed in the 1960s, facial recognition technology has been used by the government and companies to identify people by matching them to photos. By 2001, the novelty of more powerful and rapid facial recognition technology grasped the public’s attention. During the January 2001 Super Bowl, surveillance cameras captured images of the crowd to find people with criminal records (FBI 2013). This potential invasion of privacy under the pretense of public safety sparked a public debate about the government taking private information from citizens. So what limitations should be put on the use of facial recognition software in America in order to keep the public feeling secure? In recent years, many companies who use this technology claim it is

It is important to note that the main applications of biometrics are utilized for preventing fraud and ensuring security. The use of biometrics has increased tremendously but so has social, ethical, privacy, practical and even political issues associated with it (Duquenoy, Jones & Blundell, 2008). Following is the detail regarding its ethical and privacy issue implications.

I concur with you on the use of biometrics by the government, and especially facial recognition to apprehend criminals. The recent rise in criminal cases can be halted if such a system is deployed. Biometrics can never go wrong and is in fact one of the most accurate ways of identifying people. If the government can be able to launch a system that can capture personal specifications, it can be really helpful.

Biometrics is a method of identifying an individual based on characteristics that they possess, typically physiological features such as a fingerprint, hand, iris, retina, face, voice, and even DNA. Some methods of biometrics security even use multiple physiological features or multimodal biometrics to provide superior security than a single form of biometrics can provide. Why are biometrics important in the field of information security? Biometrics provide a remarkable amount of security for information because biometrics are unique to each person, and thus cannot be lost, copied, or shared with another individual. This security allows for biometrics to provide a means to reliability authenticate personnel. The importance of biometrics can be further divided into the history of biometrics and why it was devised, past implementations of biometrics, current implementations of biometrics, and future implementations of biometrics.

Identification processes are significantly more complex and error prone than verification processes. Biometrics technologies are indicators of authentication assurance with results based on a predetermined threshold with measurable False Accept Rates and False Reject Rates.

Biometrics is a piece of technology shown off in BTTF2 and now biometrics are almost being used in our everyday lives. People have it on their phones and sometimes even check into work with them. The problem is people place their hands everywhere making it easy to find them. Basically ruining the whole concept of safety with biometrics. For example, Magaly Ramirez, a student

Biometric Authentication refers to the usage of software that looks for physical markers to allow access to a system. Some of the most commonly used physical markers are fingerprints, face-recognition, voice-recognition, and iris-recognition (Williams & Sawyer, 2015). As no two humans are exactly alike biometics are less likely to be hacked, although it is not impossible.

To what extent should governments and companies be using biometric information obtained from facial recognition technology for surveillance and convenience in identifying individuals in society? This article discusses the legislature that must be implemented to protect our right to privacy. We will reach a conclusion by further analyzing the benefits and the risks of the new technology, evaluating the privacy issues that accompany, and discussing faults in the

Ultimately all experts agreed that biometrics are superior to older methods of online identification. But experts question if this new technology is enhancing the customers experience. Experts debate these new features because they are more reliable than passwords but when hacked can give out more personal information. The social network for those in the IT industry Spiceworks says that 90% of companies will use biometrics by 2020.Companies like Microsoft and Facebook are already using this technology because it is a cheaper alternative than passwords. Passwords can get hacked, but are also easy to change, biometrics can be hacked, but users cannot change biometrics. Not only do hackers access your fingerprints, but they also have all of your online secured personal information. This advancement has proved to be beneficial for companies, but consumers are wary to give up this information. This is due to the fact the companies are selling this information to third parties without consent from the users. The European Union is addressing citizens' concerns mandating that companies give consent to customers. Hopefully other nations like the U.S. will adopt these laws to protect citizens. The article draws that biometrics can help companies get to really know their customers but customers no longer trust them because they have gone too

I agree with you, David. People can go back and forth on this topic for days because it is so controversial. Biometrics, such as facial recognitions, aren’t just used for the heck of it and to spy on people. These devices and software were invented for the sake of making the world a safer place, but then again, even that statement can cause a debate. Agencies don’t just invest thousands of dollars to spy on people at traffic lights, but rather to attempt to make the place safer. I definitely see how that can violate privacy, but what can we do when we weren’t aware that it’s happening?

Biometrics has been used for many years and has since been upgraded to now identify criminals by their voice, retinal scan, hand writing, and facial features. It can be used by all forms of government and can also be used by small businesses, financial institutions, retail stores, and even health and social fields uses biometrics to protect access to financial information and internet sites. The Automated Fingerprint System uses mathematical models to classify and identify fingerprints by characteristics, or minutiae. High speed silicon chips are used to plot and pinpoint each minutiae and count ridge lines of the fingerprint to make a match. Are there any drawbacks? First, although it has made great strides, biometrics can also make mistakes, for instance, even in a favorable setting - with "reasonable controlled indoor lighting" - the best facial recognition systems have only a 90 percent success rate of matching and individual subjects are compared to a stored database of images. These systems are better at identifying men than women, older people than younger ones, and can be "outsmarted" by simple tricks such as placing a photo of an authorized individual in front of the lens. Then there is false identification. About 1 percent of the time, facial

We live in a world today, in which technology moves at a very rapid pace. Many of these technological advances can be used to make our everyday lives easier and safer. One of these new technologies is Biometrics. Biometrics is the process of measuring a person’s physical properties. This would include measuring things like fingerprints, retinas, odor, vein structure on the back of the hand and many other things. Biometrics is a very important topic because it would create better security precautions for certain places that need to be secure. Biometrics will make our society safer by only allowing authorized people out of secure facilities and by keeping the unauthorized people out. Throughout the rest of this

It can cost a company up to $10,000 to apply biometrics to a single door. However, if security is a top concern for a company, this may be a worthy investment. A one-time fee of $10,000 security fee to implement this technology might be more worth it to a company than risking the theft or tampering of less secure critical assets or information. For example, biometric recognition has already been implemented at Virginia Tech’s data center. The employee has to enter a passcode and provide a fingerprint to access the door to the center. Behind the door over hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and sensitive information is secured, therefore Virginia Tech made the decision to spend more money up front on security rather than risk the loss that would result in the event of a

Improved accuracy and improved convenience are two of the biggest benefits of biometric technology for personal identification. First, unlike passwords or PIN numbers, which can be used by anyone who knows the required information, biometrics looks at a

Biometric technologies are getting better and finely tuned. The rate of false readings and errors has sharply fallen. However it still requires careful consideration and planning to implement a biometric identification system. They are most costly and complicated to implement as compared with other authentication systems. A proper evaluation of the system is important before purchasing any biometric system. A thorough risk analysis is necessary. In many cases biometrics may be overkill. Biometrics must be used if there is high level of risk involved. Customer acceptance is also important when logging on to company websites. Home users might not be ready to install biometrics on home computers for online banking.