MisTek - Technological Misbehaviour

The US government’s attempt to subpoena the search records of Google and other search engines has drawn a lot of attention from the press and internet users over the last week. While the story has major implications for the search engine industry, the implications for other industries has been almost universally ignored. The biometrics industry should be watching proceedings very carefully as the outcome of the government’s moves against Google could lead to some very serious questions regarding the ways in which biometric information can be handled.

Biometric device manufacturers and advocates have for years had to fight against a solid base of people and organisations opposed to the use of biometrics on the grounds of privacy. Private manufacturers have had to deal with the issue of secure data storage as one of the central tenets of the anti-biometric movement.

Opponents of biometrics are concerned over the security of data both from a technological point of view as well as from an more conventional point of view, long fearing that companies might share the data with other companies and governments without the permission of biometrics users - including in unforseen circumstances such as the recent new’s of the government’s subpoena of information from the search engines.

Alarming to privacy advocates should be the relative ease with which several search engine companies appear to have acceded to the government subpoena for search data - albeit data that didn’t necessarily contain peronally indentifying details. Yahoo! has confirmed that they complied with the government’s request while MSN has declined to say if they even received a similar subpoena. This raises concerns regarding the level of opposition that some biometrics using companies would raise to a similar subpoena if presented with a similar situation in which the government was requesting sensitive private data, not to mention further concerns that the government, having seen success with attaining such information this time, will attempt to attain even more sensitive data in the future.

Given that Yahoo!, Google and MSN have massive resources with which to challenge a government subpoena and now knowing the fact that at least one succumbed at the first hurdle, it isn’t that much of a stretch to suggest that many biometrics companies (none of which have the financial clout of the major search engines to finance a potentially expensive legal battle with the government) would also simply acquiesce to government demands.

With this being said, the onus naturally falls to biometrics companies to demonstrate their intention and ability to secure data from being shared with any other parties. We doubt this will be done to the satisfaction of privacy groups.

Technorati Tags: biometrics, privacy, Google, MSN, Yahoo!, search engines