A Classification of Biometric Applications Wanted by Politics: Passports, Person Tracking, and Fight Against Terror

摘要

This paper presents a classification of biometric applications wanted by politics in the shade of the terror attacks of Sep. 11th 2001. Politics in the urgent obligation to protect the health and property of inhabitants is in need to quickly find appropriate methods. Biometrics was one of the general technical methods almost immediately claimed for passports, person tracking, and fight against terror. At second sight it is clear that biometrics is no help in finding an unknown, "sleeping" terrorist in advance. But what kind of applications can help to protect a nation's inhabitants against attacks by terrorists and how much privacy is to be given up, if one wants to enable special biometric applications for surveillance and to react adequately in the case of danger? With an initial classification of biometric applications and the description of a possible scenario of antiterror biometrics this paper offers a starting point for the discussion on how privacy in particular and society in general will be influenced by biometric applications wanted by politics.