Fear of biometric digital identification: breaking fears and stereotypes

Biometric digital identification and documents with electronic chips cause distrust and apprehension in many people. Why are these technologies worry society so much and what makes even the populists of modern technologies become conservatives? Today we will look at the main fears of digital identification and try to debunk all the myths.

Why is digital ID no longer the future, but the present?

Digital biometric identification of a human is ideal. In fact, this is an integral part of a person as a biological system, a set of traits that are given to us from birth. Unlike a passport, driver’s license, credit card and tickets, biometrics are always with us. You will never forget your face, eyes, voice, pupils and fingerprints at home.

The prospect of going through passport control at the airport in a few seconds, instantly receiving a boarding pass or money from an ATM, going to a concert or sports event only by “showing” your face looks attractive. U.S. Customs and Border Protection biometric devices have already been installed at New York airport, similar functionality is also endowed with the baggage drop machines of Delta airlines. Experts point out that biometric authentication is the only way to increase the capacity of objects with a large flow of people.

According to SITA forecasts, by 2036 the number of air passengers will double to 7.6 billion. This is a colossal load on infrastructure. Document checking at airports has long been a bottleneck in the airline industry. Authorization of passengers in a unified biometric database will significantly speed up the passage of passport control and boarding the plane.

Biometrics has become a part of the banking business as well. According to Visa Europe, 75% of young people in mobile banking use biometrics to confirm payments. But there is still the sphere of tourism, rental housing, car rental, car sharing, medical and municipal services.

You can’t change your face

The question arises: why are people so afraid of the widespread introduction of public biometric authentication? These fears, quite reasonable, are fueled by many reasons. It is also important who is most actively promoting these technologies, who has become the driving force behind the massive introduction of biometrics.

On one hand, these are state institutions: law enforcement agencies and special services. On the other hand, banks, insurance and transport companies. People are wary of interacting with these institutions, because it is about such important things as finance, health and safety. The cost of a technical error or the consequences of malicious activity by third parties in this case is very high.

As for the implantation of chips, this technology is not formally new and has long been used, for example, for marking large livestock. But even with the most cursory glance at this technology as applied to humans, many questions arise. Is it safe to implant chips, physically and mentally? Who will own the data on the chip from a legal point of view? Who will have access to this data? Can they be hacked?

That is why, in our opinion, the digital biometric ID looks less shocking, moreover, it is introduced in stages and is not so painful. So, for example, almost everyone is calm about biometric passports, but biometrics as a means of access also raises many questions. Many have heard about how an automatic face recognition system was introduced in London, which in 2018 generated 98% of false positives. The New York experiment with facial recognition for motorists failed miserably. The city authorities wanted to look for terrorists in this way, but because of the too high flow rate it was impossible to “catch” the faces of the drivers.

Biometric ID attributes are stored digitally. Therefore, it is very important to ensure their maximum security: if your biometric data is compromised, then, unlike your login and password, you will not be able to change them.

At the same time, the procedure for “rehabilitation” of compromised biometrics will obviously be more difficult than replacing the classic secret combinations.

Digital ID security

The main fear of a person is the possibility of cloning his appearance (creating masks on a 3D printer, searching for doubles, etc.) for further use for fraudulent purposes. However, we see such Hollywood scenarios as much less possible than, for example, the classic loss or theft of a civil passport.

Let’s imagine that along with the classic paper or plastic ID, you now have a digital one, which is stored on your phone, and access to it is provided after entering a password and passing face identification (or other biometric identification). To use your digital ID, a fraudster will not only need to compromise your biological parameters, but also gain access to your phone and find out the password from the application. At the same time, the use of a digital ID in any case requires the actual presence of the owner, which means that it is also necessary to be “very similar” to the person depicted on the documents, which is impossible in itself.

In addition, the presence of a digital ID will allow you to quickly report theft of your “paper” ID, after which it will automatically become invalid. Also, you can reset your digital ID at any time (for example, in case of theft of your phone).

All this allows us to assert that digital ID is a reliable, convenient and quick way of identifying a person, and during a pandemic it has a serious number of advantages over classical methods. The main fears and stereotypes are based more on incredible mythical stories and do not have rational arguments.