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Reframing biometric surveillance: from a means of inspection to a form of control

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Abstract

This paper reviews the social scientific literature on biometric surveillance, with particular attention to its potential harms. It maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Demonstrating these harms with examples from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, I propose that biometric surveillance be addressed, evaluated and reframed as a new form of control rather than simply another means of inspection. I conclude by delineating three features of biometric technologies—complexity, objectivity, and agency—that demonstrate their social power and draw attention to the importance of studying biometric surveillance.

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Notes

  1. Roger Clarke provides a detailed framework for surveillance analysis, consisting of six forms of surveillance (physical, communications, data, location, body, and omnipresent/omniscient), and seven dimensions of surveillance activity (of what, for whom, by whom, why, how, where, when). http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/FSA.html#DSA.

  2. One well-known public manifestation of this harm occurred in January 2001, when 70,000 football fans gathered at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida to watch the 35th Super Bowl championship. These fans were unaware that while they were watching the game, they were also being watched. During the game, facial recognition cameras had scanned spectators’ faces and produced templates that were immediately searched against a computerized database of criminals (McCullagh 2001).

  3. From time to time, scientists report on unpleasant encounters between cancer patients with deleted fingerprints and biometric technologies, such as a 62-year-old man who was detained by US customs (Wong et al. 2009) and a 65-year-old woman who was denied service at a bank (Chavarri-Guerra and Soto-Perez-de-Celis 2015).

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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.

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Correspondence to Avi Marciano.

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Marciano, A. Reframing biometric surveillance: from a means of inspection to a form of control. Ethics Inf Technol 21, 127–136 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9493-1

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