The 2nd Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop happened a month ago on March 16th, 2023 and we had 75 people registered for this live event,
The goal was to bring together a range of stakeholders with an interest in exploring the use and application of biometrics for an uncommon conversation – one not happening in venues sponsored by and/or dominated by single constituency (i.e., vendors, non-profit organizations).
My area of speciality is user-centric digital identity. I started out wondering how individuals could better represent themselves online – have ownership and control of the digital identifiers that they use when interacting in digital spaces. I collaborated with others, and we called this type of identity user-centric digital identity. We created an innovative form in 2005 called the Internet Identity Workshop where we co-create the agenda live at the event.
Conversations about biometrics, and their use and implementation in relation to digital identity technology, has been increasing steadily. I share many of the concerns that civil society organizations do, and also know that biometrics can have a role to play within well-designed digital identity systems. A more nuanced conversation with multiple stakeholders is needed for this to be effective. I invited several folks to join me as co-conveners of the events, including Jack Callahan and Asem Othman at the first workshop, and Brian Hofer, Executive Director of Secure Justice, for the second workshop.
We could not have succeeded in these events without our sponsors, and we are very grateful to those who contributed: Paravision, ID2020, Simprints and Lakota Software. Thoughtful Biometrics is fiscally sponsored within Planetwork, an NGO that has been at the forefront of hosting nuanced conversations about technology and their implications for 20 years.
For this event we proactively spent several months reaching out to key constituencies of civil society advocates, biometric scientists and companies, policy makers and regulators, biometrics implementers from government civil society, government and the private sector and technologists in related fields. We had a balance of participants from all constituencies and this generated deeply nuanced and generative discussions.
One metaphor we used in framing the workshop purpose was the need for a ‘third attractor,’ a term used by Daniel Schmactenberger. In his framework, the power of ever-increasing technological capacity (“exponential tech”) means that both destructive and creative capacities are increasing exponentially. The two likely outcomes (attractors) polarize around either chaotic breakdown or powerful control systems/oppressive authoritarian control. Given this, the inquiry is: what does a third option or ‘third attractor’ look like, and what nuanced conversations and compromises are necessary for that?
I am inspired by the respect, knowledge, and shared curiosity that all the participants brought to the sessions at Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop, and look forward to future events together.
When people registered for the conference we asked them about what they wanted to discuss and got a really great set of potential topics. During the opening first hour of the conference we co-created the agenda together live using a method called open space technology.
You can see the whole list of topics here in the draft book of proceedings.
One of the highlights for me was learning about what is happening in Portland. They are doing pretty deep civil society engagement around biometrics including making an inventory of surveillance technologies. Several links to what they are doing were shared in this session.
Chris Buchanan put forward a great presentation called A Thoughtful Process for Regulating Digital Identity this is how it was summarized.
Digital Identity is NOT equivalent to Physical Identity. Entropy rules the physical universe which makes the physical world eventually private. Aggregation rules the digital universe which makes the digital world eventually public.
Without designing in privacy and data entropy, privacy is guaranteed to be lost.
There are many technologies that can help introduce entropy to the digital space but none of them can be effective in a free market because they reduce revenue. Therefore, they must be regulated.
Eric Welton who despite being up overnight to attend from Thailand hosted a great session about two-D barcodes and how they could be used in various situations.
In the last session of the day I personally hosted a session on signage – informed by my own experience in a biometric system that I had to go through that had ZERO signage – Biometric Exit while leaving the US to Thailand via Taiwan in March (To put on the APAC Digital Identity UnConference).
It is against the law to use biometrics in New York without clear signage and an example of what was required was shared.
There were a lot of great conversations and many threads to explore in the future.