When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, And The Technology Of Identity [Paperback]

From digital fingerprinting to iris and retina recognition, biometric identification systems are a multibillion dollar industry and an integral part of post-9/11 national security strategy. Yet these technologies often fail to work. The scientific literature on their accuracy and reliability documents widespread and frequent technical malfunction. Shoshana Amielle Magnet argues that these systems fail so often because rendering bodies in biometric code falsely assumes that people’s bodies are the same and that individual bodies are stable, or unchanging, over time. By focusing on the moments when biometrics fail, Magnet shows that the technologies work differently, and fail to function more often, on women, people of color, and people with disabilities. Her assessment emphasizes the state’s use of biometrics to control and classify vulnerable and marginalized populations—including prisoners, welfare recipients, immigrants, and refugees—and to track individuals beyond the nation’s territorial boundaries.When Biometrics Failis a timely, important contribution to thinking about the security state, surveillance, identity, technology, and human rights.

This book examines the proliferation of surveillance technologies—such as facial recognition software and digital fingerprinting—that have come to pervade our everyday lives. Often developed as methods to ensure national security, these technologies are also routinely employed to regulate our personal information, our work lives, what we buy, and how we live.

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