Sociocultural Implications of Biometrics

Aimee Farr aimee.farr at pobox.com
Mon Sep 10 20:27:23 PDT 2001


Faustine wrote:

> New online PDFs of possible interest from the RAND Corporation:
>
> Sociocultural Implications of Biometrics
>
> The Army is considering how it can use biometric systems -- automated
> methods of authenticating an individual based on physical or behavioral
> characteristics -- to improve security, efficiency, and convenience.
> Recognizing that biometrics is not without controversy, however, the Army
> asked RAND's Arroyo Center to assist in an assessment of the legal,
> sociological and ethical implications. A new publication reports the
> findings. http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1237/

Google also Mayfield v. Dalton, 109 F.3d 1423 (9th Cir.1997) which
challenged a military DNA repository as violating the Fourth Amendment.
Between the district court and the appellate, the military made some
changes...shortening the holding period from 75 to 50 yrs, allowing for
individualized destruction upon request after military service, delineating
permissible uses, etc.-etc.

Compare to the Brits, who are experimenting with chipping their soldiers:
dog tags to pet chips.

Although I'm on the consortium list, etc. My RAND pubs notice did not
include the online version. Thanks, Faustine. Saved me some $. I always read
your contributions.

~Aimee

PS: Although elementary for many in here (but you are quite unusual),
Understanding Surveillance Technologies by Julie K. Petersen, available on
Amazon, has some "handy stuff" in it for a broad overview of surveillance
technologies. (I always appreciate private notes to papers/refs on
surveillance topics.)





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