Evolving Privacy Rights: Legal Implications of Biometric Data Collection

As ‘automated’ biometric data collection technologies like facial recognition, fingerprint scans, and iris tracking quietly become part of daily life, the boundary between convenience and intrusion is rapidly collapsing. Two decades ago, biometric technology was reserved to core areas such as forensics, crime-criminal identification procedures, and passports. The previous decade saw a boom in automation of biometric technology following the terrorist attacks, when countries like the United States, United Kingdom, India, and several others began authenticating via biometrics for the sake of national security. Fast forwarding to the present decade, biometric data collection technology has coupled with Artificial Intelligence, and is almost leading every aspect of our identities. Whether it is a simple legal procedure like Know-Your-Customer compliance or the act of unlocking a smartphone, it has gained access to the most intimate layer of a human-being’s privacy. At this stage, it becomes imperative to ask: where should we draw the line? Can techno-legal boundaries genuinely reclaim personal privacy? The answers are convoluted. The entire state of affairs has gone from identification to coerced authentication. In other words, identification that arose out of necessity has now become a requisite of proving one’s identity to access basic human services, such as access to several Government schemes. The beauty of the entire issue at hand is that despite being nearly three decades old, it has, as it appears, successfully transitioned into the most concerning and troublesome threat to individual privacy. The article will focus on identifying the challenges that have surfaced, and the challenges that have potential to surface in the near future through biometric data collection technology, and how these categories can challenge the foundations of the law as it is known today. The analysis drawn as a consequence of this process will include scrutinized legislative steps, judicial precedents, and instances of comparative studies.