Marghanita da Cruz (and Tom) write, > Information management capability matrix draft for comment ... > http://naa.gov.au/records-management/development/qualifications/draft- matrix.aspx
Hmm .. Not one specific mention of privacy in this whole records-management draft document. Perhaps the writers have graduated from an MIT bigdata course :) But Jan writes, > If anyone is after a primer on biometric recognition, check this out. > http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12720 Interesting reference Jan. This book certainly examines broader issues .. (Quote) Cultural, Social, and Legal Considerations Biometric systems assume and require an intimate relationship between people and technologies that collect and record the biological and behavioral characteristics of their bodies. It is therefore incumbent upon those who conceive, design, and deploy biometric systems to consider the cultural, social and legal contexts of these systems. Not attending to these considerations and failing to consider social impacts can bring serious unintended consequences. Privacy as a Cultural Consideration Biometric systems have the potential to collect and aggregate large amounts of information about individuals. Almost no popular discussion of biometric technologies and systems takes place without reference to privacy concerns, surveillance potential, and concerns about large databases of personal information being put to unknown uses. ("Mission creep") Privacy issues arise in a cultural context and have implications for individuals and society apart from those that arise in legal and regulatory contexts. The problems arising from aggregating information records about individuals in various information systems and the potential for linking those records through a common identifier go well beyond biometrics, and the challenges raised have been addressed extensively. For example, a 2007 NRC report that examined privacy in the digital age had a host of citations to important work in this area. A thorough treatment of authentication technologies and privacy, with references to a host of sources, appears in the NRC report "Who Goes There? Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy" (2003), which treats the constitutional, statutory, and common law protections of privacy and their intersection with modern authentication technologies, including biometrics. Record Linkage and Compromise of Anonymity Information of various kinds about individuals is routinely stored in a variety of databases. Linking such information, however imperfectly, in order to form profiles of individuals is also routinely done for purposes ranging from commercial marketing to law enforcement. The biometric data stored in information systems have the potential of becoming yet another avenue through which records across systems might be linked. This potential raises several questions: Under what circumstances is such linkage possible? If undesirable linkages are technically feasible, what technological and/or policy mechanisms would impede or prevent them? How could compliance with those mechanisms be monitored by those whose data are stored? What criteria should be used for deciding whether these mechanisms are needed? Depending on the anticipated uses of the personal data, policy and technical mechanisms may have to be put in place to prevent their unauthorized linking. A challenge related to record linkage is the potential for erosion or compromise of anonymity. Thus, even a biometric system that does not internally link an individuals biometric data with other identifying information may fail to preserve anonymity if it were to be linked using biometric data to another system that does connect biometric data to identity data. This means that even a well-designed biometric system with significant privacy and security protections may still compromise privacy when considered in a larger context. A related challenge is secondary use of data. That is, using data in ways other than originally specified or anticipated. ("Mission creep") The 2003 NRC report "Who Goes There?" examined secondary use in an authentication context. The challenge to privacy posed by secondary use of data in information systems generally, and particularly in data-intensive systems even without biometrics, is widely known. Although it may seem that these concerns are specific to individuals, privacy considerations can have broad social effects beyond the individual. Privacy breaches, however well-contained, can erode trust not only in the technological systems but also in the institutions that require their use. The potential for abuse of personal information can be sufficient to make segments of society reluctant to engage with particular technologies, systems, and institutions. Biometric systems carry their own particular privacy challenges in addition to many of those that have been identified for other information systems .. -- Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server
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