By Leischen Stelter – 02.23.2010

CONCORD, N.H.—A bill introduced in the New Hampshire Legislature could have serious consequences for the development and deployment of biometric technology and could also jeopardize public confidence in the technology. HB 1409, sponsored by Rep. Neal Kurk, originated over concerns of privacy, but there is concern that the broadness of the bill could negatively impact the development of biometrics as an important security tool, said Don Erickson, director of government relations for Security Industry Association.

Specifically, this bill dictates, “no government agency or private entity shall issue an identification card, other than an employee identification card, or use an identification device or system, that requires the collection or retention of an individual’s biometric data.” The legislation also restricts the disclosure use of “biometric data as a condition of doing business with, engaging in any business activity or relationship with, or obtaining services from, that agency or entity.”

The legislation would ban all biometrics, including fingerprints, palm prints, facial features, voice data recognition, iris recognition, hand geometry and retinal scans, according to the bill.

If passed, this legislation would take effect on January 1, 2011.

SIA issued a statement saying that banning nearly all the uses of biometrics is an inappropriate response to privacy concerns. “The sponsor was concerned about privacy and the protection of individual privacy” not about issues of security, said Erickson. And, he contends, biometrics are actually more secure than other technologies. “With biometrics, you don’t have a password or a key to lose, it’s biometric information so you don’t have to worry about people stealing it,” he said.

Vijay Kumar, marketing manager for Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, Schlage biometrics, agreed that biometrics pose minimal privacy concerns. “A lot of people don’t understand biometrics and these situations are based on misperceptions,” he said. “I think people confuse it with the systems they see on TV crime shows.” The major distinction, said Kumar, is differentiating between identification and authenticating systems. “Identification compares a person to all the people in the system and matches one to a number of samples,” he said. “Authentication is a one-to-one search, where a live biometric—a hand sample for example—is presented by a person and compared to a stored biometric given by the person by consent.”

He agrees with Erickson that biometrics are actually a very secure form of identification. “Biometrics of authentication is actually a more private situation than what we had when we used numeric codes and password and those types of identities are easy to capture,” he said.

However, industry members aren’t surprised this bill was introduced. Security concerns are not to be taken lightly. In this day and age, with increasing incidents of credit card and identity theft, people have a reason to be concerned about privacy, said Erickson. “The industry has taken steps to control personal identification information and it’s in their interest to,” he said. “End users need to be sensitive to this and spend time doing their homework on exactly how the technology works and privacy guards in place.”

And while this bill is troubling for those involved with biometrics, few think it will make much more progress in New Hampshire.  Erickson said the bill was recently voted down 11-6 in committee and doubts it will be reintroduced.