My fingers are all mine: Five reasons why using biometrics may not be a good idea

Biometric technology has undoubtedly become the bedrock of national and commercial identity management infrastructures, and will become more so in the future. While the technology promises great benefits, its use raises a variety of serious ethical, social and technical concerns. The processing and storage of human biological data for this purpose is not entirely foolproof. Moreover, when it comes to deployment in large-scale infrastructures, the accuracy and reliability issues become more serious. Characteristic human data such as facial images and fingerprints is very personal and permanent to humans, the misuse or abuse of which could be disastrous for the privacy of individuals. The purpose of this paper is to delve deeper into these issues, and highlight some of these concerns.