A Research Project Funded by the Sixth Framework Research Programme of DG Research (European Commission)

Home page > Challenge Publications > Are you who you say you are? The EU and Biometric Borders

Are you who you say you are? The EU and Biometric Borders

Monday 26 November 2007, by Lodge Juliet

The question of proving identity using biometric information, storing, accessing and verifying it raises more than technical questions.

It goes to the heart of the legal and political values of our politics. The prospect of cross-border automatic information exchange and e-governance beg questions about how an abuse of power can be avoided, democratic accountability sustained, and liberty and security brought into balance. Liberty can be compromised inadvertently or using the argumentation of exceptionalism. Security can be enhanced by cross-border cooperation and information exchange but the security and e-government technologies that enable them are neither risk nor value-free.

This book starts by examining these issues with reference to the introduction of legal and technical rules and systems that were initially limited in scope, purpose and function to asylum and migration. It goes on to consider the free movement of personal data, data protection, the mandatory taking of biometric identifiers from visa applicants, the cross-border goals of the Hague Programme and the roll-out of e-government and e-transactions in a digi-space where democratic controls and accountability are elusive.

The absence of joined-up thinking about the underlying scientific, technological and politico-legal assumptions challenges us to rethink how we define ourselves and how we visualise, value and protect liberty and security.

Table of contents

Are you who you say you are?

CHALLENGING LIBERTY Angela Liberatore