America Identified: Biometric Technology and Society

The use of biometric technology for identification has gone from
Orwellian fantasy to everyday reality. This technology, which verifies or recognizes
a person's identity based on physiological, anatomical, or behavioral patterns
(including fingerprints, retina, handwriting, and keystrokes) has been deployed for
such purposes as combating welfare fraud, screening airplane passengers, and
identifying terrorists. The accompanying controversy has pitted those who praise the
technology's accuracy and efficiency against advocates for privacy and civil
liberties. In America Identified, Lisa Nelson investigates the complex public
responses to biometric technology. She uses societal perceptions of this particular
identification technology to explore the values, beliefs, and ideologies that
influence public acceptance of technology. Drawing on her own extensive research
with focus groups and a national survey, Nelson finds that considerations of
privacy, anonymity, trust and confidence in institutions, and the legitimacy of
paternalistic government interventions are extremely important to users and
potential users of the technology. She examines the long history of government
systems of identification and the controversies they have inspired; the effect of
the information technology revolution and the events of September 11, 2001; the
normative value of privacy (as opposed to its merely legal definition); the place of
surveillance technologies in a civil society; trust in government and distrust in
the expanded role of government; and the balance between the need for government to
act to prevent harm and the possible threat to liberty in government's
actions.