Get ready to have your biometrics tracked 24/7
It's already too late to stop the ubiquitous tracking and monitoring of the public through biometrics, says Peter Waggett, Programme Leader at IBM's Emerging Technology Group. We need to stop worrying about prevention, and start working out how to make the most of data garnered from that kind of surveillance.
"We're fighting the wrong battle when we ask should we stop people being observed. That is not going to be feasible. We need to understand how to use that data better," urged Waggett, who was speaking as part of a Nesta panel debate on what biometrics mean for the future of privacy.
"I've been working in biometrics for 20 years, and it's reaching a tipping point where it's going to be impossible not to understand where people are and what they are doing. Everything will be monitored. It's part of the reason why when we put together the definition of biometrics it included biological and behavioural characteristics -- it can be anything."
To back up his point, Waggett identified a few of the futures once portrayed in science fiction movies, now a reality. Minority Report is generally the go to film for these kinds of comparisons. But it's the commercial aspects of the film Waggett flagged up, rather than the gesture technology. In the film, the protagonist walks into a shop where an advert immediately pops up and draws on his past preferences to offer up some suggestions. "The one thing they got wrong is you won't recognise you're being scanned -- the flashing red light in the film is for effect, but all that's now feasible."
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/26/biometrics-the-good-and-bad
