Australians and Americans need to start being more aware of biometrics - fingerprint, hand or iris scans - and their potential for abuse of their privacy and civil liberties, a Deakin academic has warned.

International research carried out by Dr Nina Weerakkody from Deakin University in conjunction with colleagues in the USA and Malaysia said a survey which examined public opinion on the use of biometrics as a form of identification in everyday life found only one in five Australians and Americans believed they were an invasion of privacy while two in five had no opinion either way.
 
This compares with three in five Malaysians believing biometric devices were an invasion of privacy.

The study asked people what they thought of the use of biometric devices in everyday life.  The situations surveyed included the use of biometric devices at Automatic Teller Machines, for logging into personal computers, when buying products online, in schools to protect children, for tracking employee work hours, for security related to air travel, use by doctors and hospitals to guard patient records and in maintaining security at stadiums and other public places.

"The Malaysians were the most unhappy with biometric devices, probably because they live with it," she said.

"Malaysia is the first country in the world to introduce biometric passports and is using the MyKad as a multipurpose biometric identity card since 1999. This card carries information on a person's marital status, religion, and electorate therefore, some fear it will be used for discriminatory or preferential job selection and discrimination. Even though Malaysia is a democracy, the former government that introduced the technology was authoritarian, so the suspicion is understandable."

Overall the study found Australians, Americans and Malaysians preferred finger print scanning as a form of security.  Voice recognition was preferred next by Australians and Americans while retina scans were preferred by Malaysians.

The findings prompted Dr Weerakkody to call on Australians to become more informed about the use of biometrics in the workplace and to be more discerning about releasing personal data.

She also called for the use of biometric devices to be covered by laws, regulations, guidelines and codes of practice top prevent abuse.

"Since September 11 the use of biometric devices has become common place and affordable for both governments and organisations," she said.

"They are used for national security and border control and by employers as a way of controlling staff access to facilities, tracking staff work hours, maintaining discipline and detecting security abuses and fraud.

"However, there is the potential for and actual misuse of, these technologies.

"Just like the governments and law enforcement authorities in countries like Australia, America and Malaysia which use biometric devices for surveillance of their citizens and others in the name of security and efficiency, employers worldwide have been able to justify the use and implementation of biometric devices without discussion, debate, regulation, legal or ethical guidelines."

Dr Weerakkody said the use of biometric devices is often presented to the public as helping curb immigration and welfare fraud, misuse or abuse of facilities and equipment by employees, which makes it easy to gain public support. But the reality is that such arguments indicate the less powerful or even the disadvantaged in society as the 'culprits' making the policies less open to challenges as these groups are neither able nor organised to oppose them.

When applied in the workplace, employers introduce more controls such as biometrics to regulate things like employees' access to internet or their time taken for lunch breaks when they have to enter or exit their offices using biometric identifiers.

"Biometrics may be able to measure the time an employee spends at their desk or post, but being at one's desk or post only allows certain levels of productivity and tracking the number of hours worked is an incomplete measure of it," she said.

"Such surveillance can give rise to a work environment which lacks creativity, flexibility or the accommodation of individual and personality variances.  Far from increasing productivity, it leads to low staff morale, loss of motivation and lack of trust."

Dr Weerakkody said  the data collected by biometric devices was easily open to abuse by governments and industry.

"Since the passing of the Patriot Act in 2001, the USA government can seek access to databases on private individuals from private industries and organisations for intelligence, law enforcement and other purposes.  It is a convenient way of bypassing the legal restrictions imposed on industry for the collecting and maintaining of databases," she said.

"One could see biometric information collected by employers, especially large organisations, being obtained by governments and used to disadvantage an individual.

"It introduces an uneasy feeling of being watched and stifles dissent."