From Identity Verification to Behavior Prediction: Ethical Implications of Second Generation Biometrics

Abstract

In this article, we will compare ethical issues raised by first and second generation biometrics. First generation biometrics use characteristics readily visible to the naked eye to ensure that the person identified is the person he claims to be, whereas second generation biometrics focus on behavioral patterns with the aim of predicting suspicious behavior or hostile intentions. While the collection of biometric features for identification is visible to the person involved, capturing biometric features from a distance may go unnoticed. Our study of a range of U.S. and European projects of second generation biometrics, particularly of Future Attribute Screening Technology and Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces, shows that if data subjects are not aware of the processing of their data, and if behavioral patterns are interpreted without any knowledge of the subject's will and motives, there are risks of discrimination and stigmatization. Thus, second generation biometrics raise some new ethical concerns besides issues of integrity, privacy, and data protection and further underscore the importance of the principle of informed consent in order to maintain public trust.

Societal and ethical issues of digitization

“…Biometric systems can cause someone to be considered a criminal until evidence to the contrary is furnished. It is highly likely that this stigma will stick with such a person, for example, because the presumption is stored in a database (Sutrop and Laas-Mikko 2012;Sutrop 2010). This could be reinforced by facial recognition, which makes it easier to figure out a person's identity.…”

Behavior Analysis for Electronic Commerce Trading Systems: A Survey

“…This problem means that even highly reliable physiological authentication methods can easily be attacked when the network users are authenticated. Behavioral traits are called second-generation traits as compared to physiological traits, which are known as first-generation traits [387]. Using the current network approaches, user identity authentication is ineffective at protecting security in a network transaction environment; thus, researchers have attempted to verify user identity from the information exposed in their behavior data [388].…”

Assessment of privacy and security perception of biometric technology case study of Kaduna state tertiary academic institutions

“…On ethical issues raised by second generation biometrics, a 2012 review by group of researchers 21 found similarities between ethical issues of both first generation biometrics (system that uses physical characteristics for identification) and second generation biometrics (system that uses behavioral patterns). The common ethical issues involve data integrity, privacy, and data protection.…”