Publication of the week: H. Al-Assam, T. Kuseler, S. Jassim & S. Zeadally

Al-Assam, H., T. Kuseler, S. Jassim & S. Zeadally, “Privacy in Biometric Systems”, in S. Zeadally & M. Badra (eds), Privacy in a Digital, Networked World: Technologies, Implications and Solutions (Springer, Oct 2015), 235-263, ISBN 978-3-319-08469-5.

This chapter is mainly concerned with privacy issues and solutions surrounding the use of biometrics as a means of recognising individuals. Biometrics can be a very effective tool to keep us safe and secure, prevent individuals from applying for multiple passports or driving licences, and keep the bad guys out or under control. However, the fact that we are surrounded by so many biometric sensors does limit our privacy in one way or another. The price we might have to pay for using many biometrics-reliant applications such as access control to a building, authorising payments in supermarkets and public transports is the loss of privacy as a result of being tracked in almost all of our daily life activities. Furthermore, recent research into biometrics shows that more and more personal information can be revealed from biometric data such as gender, age, ethnicity, and even some critical health problems such as diabetes, vision problems, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. Such confidential information might be used, for example, to discriminate between individuals when it comes to insurance, jobs, border entry enforcement etc.

Read more about the chapter on the Springer website.

Hisham Al-Assam is Lecturer in Applied Computing at Buckingham, and Sabah Jassim is Professor of Mathematics and Computation.  Torben Kuseler and Sherali Zeadally both have doctorates from the Department of Applied Computing.