The Politics of Biometric Standards: The Case of Israel Biometric Project

ABSTRACT

In 2017, after years of public debate, Israel ratified a national biometric project consisting of two initiatives: issuing of biometric ID cards and passports to all Israeli citizens and establishment of a centralized database for storing their bodily information. Design and implementation of a preceding four-year pilot study were accompanied by extensive standardization. Discourse and standard analyses of 33 official state documents – from legal records to performance reports – published by Israeli authorities during the pilot study, unravel the politics of biometric standards employed as part of this project. Biometric standards were used to establish hierarchies between individuals and groups by defining particular bodies as ‘biometrically ineligible.’ These individuals are mostly members of underprivileged and marginalized social groups. Biometric standards were also constructed discursively as scientific and objective to legitimize such discriminatory treatment. Israeli authorities used standards strategically, both as infrastructural elements and as a discursive means. As infrastructural elements, biometric standards were employed, inter alia, to achieve predetermined results and confirm the project’s success. As a discursive means, Israeli authorities actively adopted a ‘discourse of standardization’ to construct an objective and fair image to the project. Standardization of people – namely, quantification of lives, bodies and experiences – is inherently discriminatory because it necessarily results in the creation of categories and hierarchies between biometrically in/eligible bodies.

KEYWORDS:

• Infrastructure
• standardization
• biometrics
• discrimination
• surveillance
• classification

Acknowledgements

This article draws on my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote at the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa, under the supervision of Dr. Rivka Ribak. I want to thank her for the dedicated mentorship and guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Avi Marciano is a faculty member at the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. His research lies at the intersection of ICT, surveillance, and policy, with particular attention to the social and political consequences of biometric surveillance.

ORCID

Avi Marciano http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2813-6159

Notes

1 To my knowledge, the only exception is Donovan (2015), who studied the meaning of biometrics within the specific context of post-apartheid South African social services.

2 I encountered this situation during one of my visits to the Israel Population and Immigration Authority Bureaus. It should be understood as an anecdote rather than the result of systematic participant observation.