LOBBYING & LAW - Playing the Identity Card

By Louis Jacobson, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Saturday, March 20, 1999

	      Biometrics--the technology that recognizes individuals 
electronically by the unique characteristics of their eyes, 
hands, or voices--is booming. Now, after 15 years of growing 
sales and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, the 
biometrics industry is establishing a Washington trade group, the 
International Biometric Industry Association. 
	     IBIA executives say that the new group was created not to 
combat (or promote) any specific legislation, but rather to 
address concerns that the new technol
ogies raise troubling 
privacy questions. A biometric system identifies a person by 
scanning a trait such as fingerprints, hand structure, even 
facial geometry--and matching it with information in a system's 
database. 
	     ''We want a very positive message to clear up confusion 
that some people may have about privacy issues or a Big Brother 
agenda,'' said Richard E. Norton, the association's executive 
director and the president of Global Technology Management Corp., 
a Fairfax, Va., consulting firm. ''People hadn't been hearing 
that loud and clear.'' 
	     The association has scheduled a March 24 press conference 
to announce its official opening. Its 15 members manufacture 
fingerprint identifiers, hand-readers, iris-scanners, and voice- 
recognition systems. Officials estimate that the industry now has 
annual sales topping $ 40 million, and has as much as four times 
that amount invested in research and development. 
	     Biometric products are used to secure international 
borders, protect computer networks, control access to sensitive 
facilities, and safeguard financial transactions. For example, 
some banks now identify their automatic-teller-machine customers 
by reading their irises. New sales are increasingly made to 
companies that want to limit access to computer databases and 
networks. 
	     ''The industry has been relatively small until now, but 
it's beginning to move into the mainstream, so a much broader 
group of people is using biometrics now,'' said IBIA chairman 
William W. Wilson, former managing director of Recognition 
Systems Inc., a Campbell, Calif.-based company that sells hand- 
recognition scanners. 
	     As electronic banking and commerce have grown, so too 
have concerns about privacy. For instance, after a public outcry, 
both Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. recently removed traceable 
codes from some products because of public fears that the codes 
could be used to track their online interests. 
	     Although anti-biometrics legislation has been slow to 
emerge, the industry has already taken a PR hit or two. In 
Alabama, for instance, the motor vehicle agency caved to public 
pressure and abandoned a plan to scan and collect fingerprints of 
driver's license applicants. 
	     Paul Collier, operations director for Identicator 
Technology, a Rockville, Md., company that makes fingerprint- 
recognition devices, concedes that there is a public perception 
that only alleged criminals are fingerprinted. He added that some 
people mistakenly assume that companies provide their employees' 
prints to the FBI or share them with a national database. 
	     IBIA officials emphasize that biometrics can be used to 
combat terrorism, to prevent ''identity theft''--the unauthorized 
use of a person's name and personal information to commit fraud-- 
and to heighten personal security. Consumers can also benefit 
from speedier movement through checkpoints and a reduced need to 
remember computer passwords. 
	     Privacy advocates are ambivalent about biometrics. They 
applaud the use of biometrics to prevent unauthorized access to 
sensitive information, but they also fear that fingerprints or 
other identifying data could be misused by employers or find 
their way into the wrong hands. ''Before, the industry had only 
been talking about security, but now a lot of people in the 
industry have begun to realize that the privacy concerns are 
real, not just a figment of privacy advocates' imaginations,'' 
said Ari Schwartz, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & 
Technology, an advocacy group concerned with high-technology 
policy. 
	     IBIA officials say they want to work with privacy groups, 
and they have done so in several states. There are legitimate 
privacy concerns, the officials acknowledge, including 
individuals' access to and knowledge about their own biometric 
data as well as the government's access to such data. 
	     The relationship between the biometrics industry and 
privacy advocates ''doesn't have to be confrontational,'' Norton 
said. ''That's not to say there's no clear wall between us. But 
by clarifying our positions, we can, hopefully, come to a meeting 
of the minds.'' 
	     The past decade saw as many as a half-dozen unsuccessful 
attempts to organize biometrics companies into a trade 
association. Unlike those efforts, however, the IBIA, organized 
by veteran Washington lobbyist Verrick O. French, has deep roots 
in the K Street community. French has represented the 
International Electronics Manufacturers and Consumers of America 
as well as makers of ''smart cards'' that store financial and 
medical information on embedded microchips. IBIA executive 
director Norton has also spent years in Washington. 
	     IBIA executives said the group has not yet established a 
congressional agenda. Their greatest fear is that legislation 
aimed at other targets--such as companies that accumulate and 
sell personal data, or banks that store sensitive personal 
information about their depositors--could impose restrictions on 
biometrics manufacturers and their clients. 
	     ''Congress has already introduced 38 bills that could 
affect the biometrics industry on the privacy side, and the last 
Congress introduced 150,'' Norton said. ''We have to see how 
national legislation can clarify how biometric information should 
be handled. That said, there's nothing killing us yet--but we 
have to be vigilant.''