The Narratives of Biometrics
By Adrian Krieger (Intern Filosofie in actie, September 2022-January 2023)
Working through the discourse about biometrics happening nowadays, one can easily be overwhelmed by the multitude of articles and investigations, seemingly spreading into infinite directions. Of course, a large part of this can be attributed to the broad scope of the term ‘biometrics’. What are we talking about here? Are we just talking about face recognition cameras in public spaces? Are we talking about finger print scanning to unlock your phone?
It was those kinds of questions that first got my head spinning when I embarked on this journey that would turn into an entire research project about biometrics. My first instinct was to narrow down the question: instead of focussing on biometrics in general, I would just focus on only one technology. After some time, I settled on voice recognition. On the one hand, since I have both a background and an interest in audio recording, on the other, since - at least compared to facial recognition - voice recognition seems a little bit ‘under-researched’.
However, only halfway throughout the project would I encounter the focus point that finally gave my research the framework it deserved: perspective and narrative. Speaking of framework, I should probably explain more about the project I have been talking about. During an internship at Filosofie in actie I was able to conduct my own research project about the narratives of biometrics. I wanted to investigate the different ways we talk about biometrics and its application, as well as work towards a way of understanding where some of the ‘disagreements’ between fields like privacy law, tech development, or ethics of technology come from. For this, I delved into desk research, interviewed experts from different groups, and compiled my findings into a workshop. This article is meant as a companion piece to that workshop, summarising its contents and findings that arose throughout its implementation in a more ‘approachable’ manner.
Now, let us return to perspective and narrative. What do I mean by these, admittedly vague, terms? Let us agree on something beforehand: the world is chaos. Now I am not talking about chaotic situations or political chaos that we might encounter in our everyday lives; I am talking about the world as a totality of stimuli crashing into our senses and leaving our poor brains with the task to decide which ones are helpful and which ones not. Experiencing reality without any kind of reference point or framework would be overwhelming, and send everyone who would be so unlucky to be in that situation to fall down into an abyss of sensory overload. Amongst other disciplines like neuroscience, philosophy also sets out to tackle questions about the nature of reality, whether it is really that chaotic, and about our experiences of reality. Ontological and epistemological discussions about such things are undoubtedly fun, at least if you are someone who likes to question the basis of your entire existence, but are also unfortunately beyond the scope of which we can discuss today.
So, for the sake of this article, let us agree that we need something to order our experiences, to give us a frame of references that can help us deal with the chaos ‘out there’. Perspective, at least in the sense that I would like to talk about it today, is a direct result of our subjective experiences that help us to order these things. Our perspective can be shaped by many things: by our upbringing, our education, our work, our social lives and a plethora of other things. Personal perspectives, importantly, are unique, being shaped by our lived experiences. And at any given moment, we unfortunately can only have one perspective. Whilst this of course does not mean that these perspectives are set in stone, think about personal development, or that we cannot grasp how others view the world, it is difficult if not impossible for us to take on two perspectives simultaneously, similar how an attempt to look into two directions at once would go. Importantly, perspectives are not limited to personal perspectives, entire disciplines and fields can have perspectives, and this is what I want to talk about today.
Perspectives can shape the way we see things. Someone who worked their entire life in law enforcement has a specific way of looking at moral questions, maybe resolving to answer these questions mainly in terms of legality. Social psychology research has shown that economics students do comparably less good at cooperation games than their peers. In other words, we can arrive at the, somewhat obvious conclusion that the way we live our lives shapes the way we experience the world.
How does that then tie in with narratives? Again, narratives are a device we utilise to make sense of the chaos around us. They are the stories we tell ourselves and others about how the world works, about how things are, and about how we should see new things. Narratives arise out of dynamic processes between people, between perspectives, but also influence the perspectives.
But enough of mere concepts. What we should recognise is that at any point, our experience is subject to at least two ‘filters’, one stemming from within, one stemming from outside. What I wanted to do with my research project was to identify some of the prevalent narratives and perspectives that we take on when looking at biometrics, especially voice and speaker recognition. We should note here that the perspectives I will be describing are both not exhaustive, i.e. there could be a large number of other perspectives, and also not representative, i.e. they should be seen more as ‘archetypes’ instead of examples. But, all in all, the discussion I want to present should invite us to take a step back from the confusing discourse about biometrics, and instead consider the ways we limit ourselves in thinking about these things. So let us begin with the most ‘obvious’ perspective: technology.
Technological ‘Saviourism’
“At the moment, the application may look a bit underdeveloped. But with only a bit more time and data we can make it work.”
When one looks at the language used by tech firms one can be astonished by the optimism presented, whilst simultaneously being worrisome of the apparent carelessness. I am sure we can all think of a tech company reporting that they only need a little bit more development before their product will revolutionise our entire lives, or we can invoke the notorious stereotype of the ‘tech bro’, who will chase every technological trend fuelled by a seemingly honest belief into the technological superiority of coming days.
What shines through this all are two very important baselines. First, there is no problem, and there cannot even be a problem. Problems in the sense that something is ‘problematic’ are seemingly non-existent in technology lingo. Rather, we hear of ‘opportunities’, ‘openings’, or, when the negative cannot be overlooked, ‘setbacks’. But importantly, everything always has a solution, and in the case of biometrics, this most often seems to be ‘more data’.
Think of some of the criticisms of biometrics technology companies have been facing. It is a fact about the current state of our biometric technology that certain demographics, especially women and people of colour, are more often misidentified or experience technical difficulties in the identification process. The reason for this is simple, the datasets used to train biometric algorithms are still predominantly made up of the data of white men, often reflecting historically grown power disparities in approachability and being considered as a data source. Now, when you show such statistics about this to someone looking at this issue from the perspective of the tech firm, what will they most likely answer? “Well, this is a minor setback, but if we can include other demographics in the data collection process, we can solve this.”
Examples like this one play an important role in the narrative of technology, one which I chose to call ‘technological saviourism’. They attach the aforementioned relentless optimism to a teleological belief that any issue, any hardship, and any problem for that matter can be solved by technology, either through technological improvement, or development of technology that we cannot even think about today.
This kind of saviourism, as indeed any perspective, can be blinding in the sense that it creates ‘blind spots’. The ‘move fast and break stuff’ mentality, incidentally the first motto of Facebook, does have concrete and impactful consequences for those around it, and those consequences may not even be noticed. Technological saviourism is the honest and concrete belief that technological developments will overcome the shortcomings they have now, and be able to deal with anything that arises in the future.
But we should be generous here. Whilst indeed this kind of thinking can be blinding, the optimism carried with it is also extremely motivating. Here we can see the beauty of thinking in perspectives, because whilst they can be limiting, they can also be enabling, allowing us to see things other may not see. Technologically savvy people may consider solutions others cannot even imagine, and the relentless optimism can make them labour towards solutions even if it means hardship.
Nonetheless, any perspective comes with its price. And, as the number of lawsuits dealing with damages through technology shows us, the blind spots of the technological perspective can cause serious issues. Let us now consider the perspective and narrative of the ones dealing with these issues: lawyers and legal experts.
Lawful Protectionism
“Your Honour, this case may not be comparable to anything we have seen before it, but the illegality of the spirit of the action shines through clearly.”
In a way, lawyers and legal experts are stuck in a system that limits their thinking. Things take on one of four qualities: legal, illegal, not yet determined, or not a matter of the law. I have chosen to call the narrative conveyed here ‘lawful protectionism’. It follows a logic of something outside of the current system of laws attacking the individual, who needs protection that can only be offered by the legal experts. New developments are evaluated primarily in their threat and legal consequences.
Again, we can see the limiting effect here. When new forms of technology emerge, as was the case with the wide-spread application of biometrics, approaches from the perspective of law focused on issues such as privacy, where a legal framework already existed. But with genuinely new technology, law is often standing in front of an ungraspable problem.
There are generally two ways to deal with such things, either they should be handled as illegal until proven to not be; or they are legal until a law is made concerning them. This is where we can see the importance of legal precedents, since those also give direction and information to the development of laws in approaching new things.
But this way of looking at things is not purely limiting. Rather, keeping a protectionist mindset in this sense can be helpful not to give away important protections. Privacy laws exist for good reason, as do other laws that new and improved form of biometrics may infringe upon. Law’s perspective is exceptionally good at keeping score of all of these things and comparing old cases to what is happening right now, thereby expanding the temporal scope significantly.
But law also stands in front of another problem: Laws are specific to a certain jurisdiction, differentiated from other jurisdictions through borders that are to an extent contingent. Law has a hard time to develop a universalist claim for the ways it deals with technologies, especially new developments. However, another perspective that claims to be more universalist can be found in the Human Rights perspective which we shall discuss next.
Human Rights ‘Fundamentalism’
“There are just things that you can never do to another human, and that no amount of advantage or context could ever allow.”
Where laws are subject to change, human rights are supposed to be eternal. Where laws are dependent on the country you are in, rights are everywhere. So far so good. But how does the view from a human rights perspective influence the way in which we see biometrics?
I have opted to call the narrative that human rights advocates uphold ‘Human Rights Fundamentalism’. This is not to be confused with a sort of religious fundamentalism, but rather with a belief that human rights, or, better said, rights in general, should serve as the fundament of our handling of problems and crises. Applied to the topic of biometrics, this now takes the form of human rights advocates applying their knowledge about human rights to situations in which biometrics have seemingly unwanted consequences.
From this view, a framework of unalienable rights, consolidated in the human rights charter, arises. These rights allow to see new situations on the bases of fundamental convictions, in turn allowing the process of for instance technological developments to not overturn what we hold to be true and important. But, similar to law, this perspective also can work in restricting ways.
When there is no right defined for the situation at hand, human rights advocates have two options: Either they agree that the situation is not clearly definable in the context of rights and calls for more of a ‘case-by-case’ evaluation, or they call for the establishment of a new right. We can see the latter in the ongoing quest for devising a ‘digital rights charter’. But let us remember here the hardships and struggles that this quest was met with. Think for example about the backlash in the discourse about the right to be forgotten.
Establishing new rights always is an exhausting and challenging endeavour, where advocates are often met with a lot of backlash. Apart from this, critical human rights studies also need to recognise the historical and contemporary power dynamics that shape and determine the way human rights are formed. We need to recognise that our current human rights charter is based on developments carried out in 18th century France, with a lot of critical scholars from the Global South questioning the universal applicability of these human rights. But this is a discussion that unfortunately must be held somewhere else. Nonetheless, it points us into the direction of the last perspective I would like to discuss today: philosophy.
Philosophical ‘Investigativism’
Philosophy has often been associated with needlessly questioning and investigating everything at hand. Those who delve into philosophical works often find that the questions asked are not only ones of ‘why’ and ‘how’, but importantly questions of ‘what’, often undermining the foundations upon we have built our worldview. I shall call the narrative that arises from this hyper-critical perspective ‘philosophical investigativisim’. It is a narrative that is simultaneously radical and traditional, questioning everything and based on a long-grown canon of work. Within this narrative, things need to be clarified, investigated, and questioned profoundly before one can build their opinion about them.
In the case of biometrics, this leads to deep analyses of not only the technology itself, but everything around it. Philosophical inquiries into biometrics and its application do not stop at thinking about privacy and data, but move on to questions about identity, the metrification of human life, the power behind creating a digital passport of yourself, and a double-existence in the ‘real’ world and the digital one.
But, let us be honest here. Philosophical investigations sometimes can be without consequences when their findings are not made public. Deeply understanding an issue is an important step for dealing with it, but in itself it does not motivate any kind of change. This fact motivates the development and pursuit of ‘public philosophy’, of utilising the findings of philosophical investigations to bring about concrete changes in the world.
So, philosophy’s narrative seems to be of great value, leading to the development of profound understanding of biometrics and everything it touches. But the depths of these investigations are almost too deep. At a certain point, the dynamic of the ivory tower kicks in and concepts as well as conversations become so convoluted that one needs to invest a lot of time in order to understand what we are even talking about. And, whilst some people are definitely willing to go down that path, not everyone is or will be.
Conclusion – The Need for Communication
This list of perspectives is not exhaustive, nor is it final. This article is more like a snapshot of a developing conceptual map of perspectives and associated narratives. I have made a number of assumptions in my endeavours, first and foremost assuming homogeneity in the ‘archetypes’ and associating only one narrative to each perspective. But hopefully this showed what I wanted to show with my research: The stories we tell ourselves give us unique vantage points for looking at issues, but they also limit our view on these issues.
What then is one to make of all of this? I want to respond to this question with a kind of truism: “We need to communicate between disciplines.” Whilst this sentence most often is applied in the name of efficiency, where one discipline may be better at something than another, therefore they should divide their labour between them, I want to use it here in a more conceptual sense.
We can imagine the issue, today it was biometrics, as a picture in a gallery. Every perspective then is like a pair of glasses that allows us to see only one colour. Each perspective may therefore be able to see one of the parts of the picture with remarkable precision and depth, whilst other parts appear to be non-existent, meaningless, or just as splashes of grey. But imagine what we could see if we were able to wear all pairs of glasses at once.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the way that humans work. We cannot take of the glasses that culture has given us, nor can we just combine all glasses available. But we can describe to others what we see. Whilst this puts us under the burden of language, with its inconsistencies, vagueness, and overall ineptitude to clearly communicate (just try to hold a longer conversation without ever clarifying what you mean by a certain word), it is the best tool we have.
This, to circle back to the other half of this companionship, was the idea behind my workshop. To identify these glasses, to facilitate discussion about what certain narratives leave in or out, what certain perspectives see or do not. In this sense, it was the attempt to create space for such an interdisciplinary forum in which different perspectives can come together to deepen our understanding of the complex topic at hand.
Biometrics is indeed complex, but not ungraspable. We can utilise the different perspectives and narratives we have. We can work over restrictions and blind spots by talking to others. Technology especially is something that is often being talked about, but rarely talked with. But through the dialogue with technology companies we may be able to capture some of their relentless optimism about the future, and better understand the things going on in the world of tech.
However, this relationship needs to go both ways. Often, technologically savvy people may look down onto the endeavours of professions such as law, human rights, or the humanities for that matter. But here it is important to realise that the technological view is as limiting and simultaneously enabling as the others. Communication will not be always nice and rosy. The perspectives and narratives do not align, and often they oppose each other. We may never be able to grasp such a complex thing as biometrics, especially given its rapid development, but we can try. And we can communicate and discuss constructively to obtain the clearest picture we can get.