New Publication: "Turning biometrics into a commodity raises privacy and governance risks"
Affiliate Researcher Diego Borbón has co-authored with colleagues from Chile, Spain, Argentina, the US, and the UK, a new Comment in Nature Human Behaviour on pay-for-biometrics models, which offer financial compensation in exchange for iris scans and other biometric identifiers:
The Comment starts from three recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Chile ordering the deletion of a minor's iris data, the 2024 precautionary measure of the Spanish Data Protection Agency, and the corrective measures required by the Bavarian data protection authority under the GDPR. Several of the authors took part in the Chilean case with amicus curiae briefs or as members of the legal team representing the claimant by Fundación Kamanau and Colombara Estrategia Legal. Building on those decisions, the article examines whether consent can remain free and informed when money is on the table, why irreversible data demand safeguards that mass collection in public spaces rarely provides, and what questions regulators face regarding commercialization, corporate concentration of biometric data and the rise of private global identification systems. A final section addresses the heightened protection owed to children and adolescents.