Juliet Lodge (Prof Em. Dr Dr) from Saher (UK) Ltd and partner in ARIES was a participant at the Biometrics Institute Annual Conference 18-19 Oct 2018. London
This high level international annual meeting gathers technologists, ethicists, privacy lawyers, government officials and international organisations, biometrics developers and eID solution providers together to discuss and demonstrate new developments in the field.
Juliet chaired the special panel on ethics eIDs and she shared with the audience about how the ARIES solution could help to address the issue of reconciling privacy with ethical practice. Whilst the ARIES project focuses on prevention of ID fraud in an eCommerce and eAirport scenario, the ARIES input was of particular relevance to international organisations, such as Oxfam and the EU Fundamental Rights Agency who were particularly interested to learn how to minimise information disclosure and resist function and mission creep both in disaster and emergency relief and in peace keeping.
The potential for automated decision making to erode civil and human rights was discussed at length with the an international audience of around 70 people, as well as in the margins of the conference with well known commercial vendors and government officials. It was clear that many had failed to differentiate between privacy protecting technologies/privacy enhancing solutions and ethics. The need for ethical codes of practice was a recurrent theme with the international organisations, including the UN, who are concerned about the lack of political guidance and the growing business case for ethically informed and compliant automated decision making tools to protect vulnerable people's rights and the integrity and no- falsifiability of their identity.
The ARIES project was of significant interest and the debate / panel discussion that followed will help inform future ARIES activity with regard ethics and the use of eIDs.
