The Biometrics Institute has said that governments must take extra care when using children's biometrics for border protection and other purposes.The institute was presenting evidence before last week's Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee hearings in Sydney, Australia.The Biometrics Institute's Head of the Privacy Expert Group, Terry Aulich, said: “the Institute understands the need to ensure that those young people entering Australia as refugees or immigrants are treated with respect for their privacy and human rights. Some may have no papers and therefore need a unique identity such as that provided by biometrics like fingerprints, facial scans or iris scans.”In March, Australia announced plans for the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. The bill seeks to expand biometric data gathering at borders to tackle threats such as Australians seeking to travel overseas to fight with terrorist organisations like Islamic State. While giving evidence, Aulich agreed with the Chairman Senator MacDonald that biometrics were a significant weapon against terrorism and fraud. In its submission, the Biometrics Institute's Chief Executive, Isabelle Moeller, outlined: “the latest Migration Bill proposed by the Government needs to take into account the fact that research showed that biometrics work less accurately on young people whose bodies are not fully developed. This could lead to false accepts or rejects and cause major problems where border control authorities have an unjustified confidence in the 100% accuracy of biometric enrolments or scanning.”Aulich advised the Senate Committee to closely examine the International Standardistation Organisation's draft document ISO/IEC PDTR 30110.2 about biometrics and children and other research into the use of biometrics for children.The Biometrics Institute provided a number of references to those documents.”This would help Governments to ensure that their legislation took into account the latest technology views about children and biometrics as well as international privacy principles, many aspects of which are already contained in the Biometrics Institute's privacy Guidelines,” wrote the institute.
Biometrics Institute warns governments on border protection
