From Identification to Recognition: A Lesson for Biometric Technology From the History of Personal Identity

Throughout the history of automated personal identification, now called “biometrics” in some communities, there has been controversy over its implications for personal privacy and human dignity. This controversy has been deepened by equivocation regarding the philosophical concept of personal identity, the social concept of recognition of persons, and the forensic concept of person identification. These concepts of personal identity, recognition, and identification are central to Western literature, shared traditions, and our notions of “self,” so it is not surprising that technologies dealing with these issues would elicit controversy. The assumption of this paper is that greater understanding of the cultural meanings and nuances of these concepts is necessary to illuminate some critical aspects of the current ethical and policy debate surrounding biometric technology. Accordingly, we attempt to deconfound these core concepts by differentiating persons from attributes and labels from notions of self. We explicate two different but interrelated forms of identity and discuss their connection to recognition, identifiers, and identification. Clear definitions are presented for each of these concepts. With the intent of enlightening the complicated relationship society and individuals have with biometric technology, we discuss social risks and suggest that the complexities of identity and recognition have always been important in Western tradition, as illustrated in the Biblical story of Abraham and the Greek story of Odysseus. We conclude that biometric technologies, although not without risks, have a legitimate place in modern society for assigning identifiers to persons based on body characteristics and should not be understood as extending to the philosophical and religious foundations of personal concepts of self.