Biometrics and Privacy A note on the politics of theorizing technology

Abstract

Society's increased surveillance needs are accelerating the spread of biometric security solutions (new authentication and identification technologies based on individual physical characteristics). There are two opposing lines of argument regarding the question of whether biometrics are a threat to privacy or not. This paper analyses the two views on their tacit assumptions regarding the nature of biometric technology. It argues that the different assessments of biometric technology involve different conceptualizations and constructions of the technology in terms of its demarcation as a stabilized object. On a second level, the analysis deals with the philosophical issue of technological determinism. The opposition between deterministic and voluntarist views of technology is shaped by an underlying opposition between reification of technology on the one hand, and a conception of technology as a multifactor contingent human practice on the other . In this paper deterministic and voluntarist constructions of technology are considered as rhetorical devices , and as discursive strategies. This allows me to show how distinctions between inherent features and contingent aspects of biometric technologies, as well as demarcations between human and non-human agency are made, that imply particular distributions of responsibility and negotiating space for human choices and values. Examples are presented showing how each construction of biometric technology serves its own purpose in the political process of shaping biometrics.

Keywords:

• Biometrics
• Privacy
• Surveillance
• Philosophy of technology
• Discursive strategies
• Technological determinism
• Privacy enhancing technologies