RISE Meeting in Hong Kong Attracts Global Audience and Broadens Ethics and Security Dialogue
The 3rd International Conference on Ethics and Policy of Biometrics and International Data Sharing held in Hong Kong on January 4-5, 2010, attracted an audience of policy makers, industrial players, and others in examining the key issues facing nations, commercial organizations, and citizens as biometric systems become commonplace and the movement of data across borders becomes more difficult to manage and control
Westfield, NJ (PRWEB) January 18, 2010 — The 3rd International Conference on Ethics and Policy of Biometrics and International Data Sharing held in Hong Kong on January 4-5, 2010, attracted an audience of policy makers, industrial players, and others in examining the key issues facing nations, commercial organizations, and citizens as biometric systems become commonplace and the movement of data across borders becomes more difficult to manage and control.
The Conference was organized by and held at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Biometric Research Centre, which is a member of the RISE Consortium. The issues addressed at the meeting were wide-ranging, and included a look at challenges in human identification, large scale applications, trust, security, forensics, digital identity, amongst others. Previous Conferences have been held in Europe and in the US, and with the launch of the RISE project, the dialogue around ethics, security and biometrics has now been expanded to ensure an effective engagement of Asian stakeholders. Emilio Mordini, of the Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship, and coordinator of the RISE consortium, observed the importance of expanding this dialogue, stating that “considering China only in the context of their role as a strong competitor by western economies is short-sighted. Issues such as privacy and respect for fundamental values must become an element of the international conversation and we should earnestly engage them in an open dialogue, abandoning the often taken, and arrogant, position of being the teacher and instead, accepting the opportunity to learn from our Eastern friend.”
The expert speakers included policy makers working in the area of data protection and privacy, including John Kropf, deputy Chief Privacy Officer, US Department of Homeland Security, René von Schomberg, European Commission DG Research, Bénédicte Havelange, European Data Protection Supervisor, and Roderick Woo, Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong. The diverse group included speakers from US, European, and Asian universities where both technical and socio-economic issues are being studied, as well as representatives from law enforcement organizations who are examining how ethical issues are impacting the use of biometrics in forensic applications, especially across borders.
Many of the themes touched on the growing impact and evolution of biometrics to large scale settings. Kush Wadhwa, Managing Director of GSI noted that “the past decade has seen a dramatic evolution of biometric and security applications, and while the technological and performance aspects of these systems have significantly improved, we are still challenged in understanding how to set the optimal policies to ensure the systems are not misused. This is a particular challenge as the breadth of the systems have grown – the next decade will observe the launch of the largest systems to date, with India rolling out its UID programme to a population of more than 1 billion. As the scale of these systems grow, it becomes even more imperative that policy around data protection, individual identity, and privacy keep pace.”
The next major workshops sponsored by the RISE consortium will be held in Brussels during 2010 on the subject of “Global mobility of people and data: ethics, policy and security” and will be held in two separate sessions on March 25-26 2010 and September 23-24, 2010. These workshops will provide input for a multi-stakeholder conference to be held in Brussels in December 2010. For more information on future events, as well as documents and presentations from RISE events, visit www.riseproject.eu.
About Global Security Intelligence
Global Security Intelligence takes a broad, holistic approach to addressing current and emerging security concerns. We work within both the public and the private sector, providing much needed services in dealing with the technical (all biometrics and complementary technologies, such as smart cards, surveillance technologies, RFID, etc.), operational, economic, cultural, and management challenges common to security initiatives. Beyond this, however, we also seek to aid our clients in developing internal organizational knowledge, empowering those tasked with development of security policy and deployment of related systems through strategy development and leadership training.
About RISE:
The RISE (Rising pan-European and International Awareness of Biometrics and Security Ethics) project is a 36-month Coordination and Support Action (CSA) funded under FP7, SP-4 Capacities, Grant agreement no.: 230389, which aims to promote pan-European and international awareness on ethical aspects of biometrics and security technologies. RISE’s framing point is the new political landscape created by the Treaty of Lisbon of the European Union. The EU is now on the verge of a multifaceted reform of its decision-making rules for security which may have deep ethical and political implications. RISE will address these issues.
The RISE consortium includes the project coordinator, the Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship (IT) and project partners, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR), Biometric Research Centre (CHINA), Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies (US), Cesagen (UK), Global Security Intelligence (US), European Biometric Forum (IR), NASSCOM – DSCI (INDIA), and the University of Tartu (EE.)