Biometrics, Ownership and Privacy?

symbolic asks: "I just finished watching a small segment of World Business Review on PBS, where the topic of discussion the use of biometrics by employers to not only provide confirmation of identity, but as something to drive other parts of the operation - like tracking employee time. Briefly mentioned were face and iris scans, but as I was watching a picture of someone's iris, I realized that once an employer has captured a scan of your iris (or any biometric data), who has control over it? Does it become part of the cesspool of information trading that occurs between business and government entities? Will trading of someone's biometric information become as ubiquitous as their address or phone number. Is there any reason we should be concerned about this? I'd like to hear what others think about this." Ask Slashdot has previously approached the Biometrics topic for technical issues, but the privacy issue of such data has yet to be addressed. How do you feel about biometric data (or any data derived from your physical makeup, like your genome) being used as another commodity (like your address) in the corporate data exchange?

Comments

OT: CmdrTaco on news.com

[MisterBlister]

News.com did an interview with CmdrTaco. No mention of it yet on the front page?

View Here

There's a number of great lines in there, like the one where CmdrTaco says that Slashdot 'breaks stories' that MSNBC will later pick up!! Hah hah. What stories has Slashdot ever "broken"? Note: Linking to a page where a story has "broken" doesn't make you the "braker".

But wait, this is the kicker:

"Malda, who goes by the alias "CmdrTaco," today oversees a must-read Web site for anyone trying to read the collective pulse of the tech industry."

Hahah hahahah!! Yeah Slashdot is the collective pulse of the tech industry... I repeat, hahah hahahah!