Why Biometrics?
Securing personal privacy and deterring identity theft are national priorities. These
goals are essential to our democracy and our economy, and inherently important to our
citizens. Moreover, failure to achieve these goals is substantially inhibiting the growth
of our most advanced, leading-edge industries, notably including e-commerce, that depend
upon the integrity of network transactions. Establishing end-to-end trust among all
parties to network transactions is the indispensable basis for success. A large percentage
of the public are reluctant to engage in e-commerce or conduct other network transactions
owing to a well-founded lack of confidence that the system will protect their privacy and
prevent their identity from being stolen and misused. The misgivings of the public are
reinforced by recent publicized cases of loss of personal privacy, fraudulent funds
transfers, and outright theft and abuse of identity in network transactions.
Biometrics, an emerging set of technologies, promise an effective solution. Biometrics
accurately identify or verify individuals based upon each person’s unique physical or
behavioral characteristics. Biometrics work by unobtrusively matching patterns of live
individuals in real time against enrolled records. Leading examples are biometric
technologies that recognize and authenticate faces, hands, fingers, signatures, irises,
voices, and fingerprints.
Biometric data are separate and distinct from personal information. Biometric templates
cannot be reverse-engineered to recreate personal information and they cannot be stolen
and used to access personal information. Precisely because of these inherent attributes,
biometrics are effective means to secure privacy and deter identity theft.
