Monstrous Play in Negative Spaces: Illegible Bodies and the Cultural Construction of Biometric Technology

Abstract

Biometric technology is often described as the ultimate form of transnational surveillance, producing a readable body through a process of measurement, enrollment, and identification/verification. The technology, however, cannot read all bodies equally. This article will engage with industry analyses, the historical category “monster,” and Foucaultian notions of normativity to argue that biometric technology's production of illegible bodies suggests the unfixable nature of bodies, and calls for the need to reconfigure discourses about biometric technology.

Notes

1. This article will focus on physiological biometrics, those which depend on the measurement of a body part, rather than behavioral biometrics, which depend on the measurement of bodily movement, such as keystroke or gait.

2. In fact, one of the ways fraud is detected in the use of biometric technology is if an exact match ever occurs. This is one of the primary reasons Corien Prins (1998, p. 163) insists that biometric scans not be used as evidence in a court of law. For a rigorous Derridian analysis of this aspect of biometric technology, see Joseph Pugliese's (2005) essay, “In Silico Race and the Heteronomy of Biometric Proxies: Biometrics in the Context of Civilian Life, Border Security and Counter-Terrorism Laws.”

3. At the 2006 Biometric Consortium Conference, many of the presentations, including keynote addresses, focused on progress in the biometric industry since 9/11. Duane Blackburn, co-chair of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Biometrics, revealed in his presentation the details of the “National Biometrics Challenge.” The NSTC is an executive branch committee chaired by the President and including the Vice President, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cabinet secretaries, agency heads and “other White House officials.” The Challenge is for the purpose of communicating from the government to the biometric industry what should be the focus of biometric research to meet the needs of the nation as a whole. The top four concerns are listed in this order: National Security, Homeland Security and Law Enforcement, Enterprise and E-government Services, and Personal Information and Business Transactions. Of great interest in regard to the National Biometrics Challenge and to many presenters at the conference is the ability of biometric technology to identify individuals moving across national borders in moving vehicles. For more on the National Biometrics Challenge document, see http://www.biometrics.gov/NSTC/pubs/biochallengedoc.pdf.

4. Although the bulk of van der Ploeg's work addresses readable bodies, her more recent publications have directly addressed the fact that surveillance practices “produce infinitely better inhabitable identities for some people than for others” (2006, p. 193).

5. Although I will make reference to developments and uses of biometric technology outside of the United States, I am interested here in the influence of modernism on the technology as manifested in the West, and particularly the U.S.

6. Each of these notions of “technology” are bound to each author's understanding of science and power as non-innocent, invested, and biased, although Haraway's conception of science comes from a specifically anti-racist, feminist standpoint, whereas Foucault speaks in more abstract terms about presocial bodies upon which history is written by various technologies of power. In each case, however, technology represents a productive power, participating in the construction of social norms and ideologies.

7. I borrow this term from Donna Haraway's descriptions of epistemological positioning and scientific knowledge. She insists, as do many in science and technology studies that technologies such as computers and lab equipment are agents or actors; they contribute knowledge and affect human understanding. Furthermore, she refuses the description of such technologies as “neutral,” pointing out instead the ways they are “non-innocent” actors (1991, p. 191). Haraway defines “actors” as “entities which do things, have effects, build worlds in concatenation with other unlike actors” (1992, p. 311).

8. I am using the term “textbook” to refer to a variety of introductory books that describe themselves as available for many readers, often including students.

9. According to all of the texts who describe such workers as problematic, occupations such as bricklayers and plumbers result in a wearing down of the fingerprint to nearly smooth, while the repeated handwashing of healthcare workers also contributes to the erasure of fingerprints. These characteristics are exacerbated by the aging process.

10. Conversation with the author at the 2006 Biometric Consortium Conference. Namkung also claimed that iris scan technology that integrated infrared technology could overcome existing issues with eye color.

11. Joseph Pugliese (2005, p. 4, p. 14 ) has also noted, if only tangentially, the links of biometric technology with early uses of film and photography, but I argue here that those links are crucial in making clear the ways everyday uses of technology become depoliticized through the myth of neutrality.

12. I am grateful to Dr. Laura Kang for leading me to this important nuance.

13. As Sekula points out, Eliza Farnham used phrenological examination to support an argument against the death penalty and for the possibility of therapy and rehabilitation.

14. That biometric technology uses digital, and not photographic technology is not insignificant; however, my point is that biometric technology and the forms of visualization described by Sekula share a faith in the evidentiary role of the visual, be that photographic and analogue or digital.

15. This is especially pervasive in biometric advertising. Consider the following advertisement text for biometric products: “Making Faces ‘ID Ready’” (Animetrics “Forensica” Facial Image Enhancement System); “Know your enemy” (Identix Identity Solutions); “Knowing Who's Who When Security Really Counts” (Precise Biometrics). The advertisements referenced in this essay were made available to the author (and all attendees) by their respective companies at the 2006 Biometric Consortium Conference.

16. Also relevant to the history of bodily measurement for purposes of identity in the context of colonialism is the film Mother Dao, the Turtle-like, which edits together Dutch footage of the colonization of Indonesia with a soundtrack consisting of Indonesian poetry. Several scenes depict Dutch representatives measuring the bodies of Indonesians as if cataloguing items in a museum (Monnikendam, 1995).

17. Braidotti referred here to the definition of monster from a 19th-century text by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

18. Metretek Systems is now called Noblis. Their company information can be found at http://www.noblis.org.

19. Clarifying what 2% means is seriously debated in the biometrics industry. Others in the industry claim high FTE rates occur in a “small percentage of the population” or “2% of people” (Wing, 2006; Woodward et al., 2001, p. 12). 2% of the people in the United States measures in the millions.

20. Unless otherwise noted, any specific information about US-VISIT comes from the Department of Homeland Security, US-VISIT website at http://www.dhs.gov/xtrvlsec/programs/content_multi_image_0006.shtm. The “limited exemptions” include visitors admitted on particular visas, children under 14, persons over 79, and those the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security or the CIA Director “jointly determine shall be exempt.”

21. Unfortunately, Agamben does not acknowledge the place of slavery and colonialism in his formulation of “homo sacer.” My thanks to Dr. Ranjana Khanna and the participants in her seminar at the 2007 Duke Women's Studies Workshop for pointing this out.

Campbell, J. P., Jr. (1997 September). Speaker recognition: A tutorial. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the IEEE vol. 85, no. 9 September 1997, p. 1437–1462.

Dictionary.com (Ed.) (2004). bio. (n.d.) The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved August 1, 2007 from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bio;-metric. (n.d.) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved August 1, 2007 from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-metric.

Wing, B. (2006). Applications successes and failures. Paper presented at the Biometric Consortium Conference Baltimore, MD.