Ethical Issues in Governing Biometric Technologies

This article deals with the ethical considerations raised by the collection, storage and use of biometric data. Comparisons are drawn with human genetic databases. It will be shown that besides ethical assessment of new technologies, it is also interesting to see how the advancement of these technologies has posed challenges to existing ethical frameworks, putting collective values and public interests above individual rights. The comparison of biometric databases with medical research oriented genetic databases shows that public interest may be differently constructed: while genetic databases projects create a discourse of hope, biometric databases are surrounded by a discourse of threat. What both have in common is the imbalanced discussion of benefits and risks. The lack of knowledge and understanding of possible benefits and drawbacks of new technologies makes it difficult to build and maintain authentic public trust, which is of crucial importance for good ethical governance of databases.