Why not save time later and bar code everyone at birth :-)

>>> Ian Welton <[log in to unmask]> 08/09/2004 11:44:07 >>>
Rob Dawson on 08 September 2004 at 09:36 said:-

> Children, of course, do tend to grow into adults and within a
> few years,
> the govt will have a nice database on the adult population including

> fingerprints; initially collected to stop children being
> incorrectly charged in
> school libraries.  ID card anyone?


Biometric computer security has a very real difficulty to overcome.

Unfortunate when the purposes surrounding personal data are constantly
eroded so much by the interests of the various social groups that data
protection gets to the state that it cannot effectively function in
protecting the data subject.

Personally I can see no valid DP reasons why minimal biometric data
could
not appropriately be used in the given context; provided of course the
correct information has been provided at a level of understanding equal
to
the data subjects, and, effective security then stops the minimal
personal
data necessary for the task from being used more widely.

Of course, subsequent governmental/organisational action is always a
difficulty in many DP matters, and so any computer programme holding
Biometric data needs to be designed in such a way as to effectively
preclude
any such interference, and the DP principles would need to be dealt
with in
such a way as to still maintain the Principle one and two issues as
explained to the data subject, or allow change only as allowed by the
data
subject within the legislative framework.  I expect many with other
viewpoints could well dispute that and consider it a real failing that
the
DP regime is not effective in providing the necessary protections for
these
matters anyway.

A very sad situation arises when school kids are drawn into national
political policy issues at tender ages; I would have thought an
independent
university would provide a more widely differing human environment
appropriate to trial this sort of technology, one also able to
properly
evaluate the accuracy of any sales patter.  I am also not aware of any
police force which uses fingerprint biometric computer security
mechanisms,
I wonder why?

Ah well, Friday cannot be far off. :-)


Ian W

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