The dangers of facial recognition: How biometrics put people's lives at risk

Biometric ID cards or huge databases with facial images and digital fingerprints - biometrics are increasingly playing an important role in Germany and Europe. German police are already using facial recognition to track down criminals or people with expired visas. For everyone without a criminal past and with a valid residence permit, the dangers of this data have so far been more of a theoretical nature: What could possibly happen if the authorities have a photo of me?
Reporting by Bayerischer Rundfunk demonstrates what happens when this data falls into the wrong hands. In some cases, biometrics can put the lives of people in danger. In Afghanistan, US troops and their allies have biometrically registered millions of people - with thousands of biometric devices. These devices are now in the hands of the Taliban. Reporters from BR Data/BR Recherche and the BR AI + Automation Lab accompanied an IT expert from the Chaos Computer Club for months. He finally found evidence that former Afghan local staff are in danger because Western forces failed to protect their biometric data from the Taliban.
In this presentation, the reporters show how biometric scanners work, make the risks of the technology tangible and trace secret military data to US biometric databases.

You can have a look at our interactive web special:
https://interaktiv.br.de/biometrie-afghanistan/en/index.html

Language: English