ABSTRACT
The protection and promotion of the right to privacy in the context of surveillance and the collection, use and disclosure of personal data, including on a mass scale, is a matter of great interest and importance worldwide. The right to privacy developed by Warren and Brandeis was set against the backdrop of dense urbanization on the East Coast of the United States. In the twentieth century, he cautioned, subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the Government. Biometrics has long been eschewed by privacy advocates. Depending on the nature and implementation of any given biometric system, the use of that technology may violate a state’s international human rights obligations, as well as domestic privacy protections – or not. A related issue is ‘function creep’, whereby systems incorporating biometric data gradually spread to purposes not publicized or not even intended when the identifcation systems originally were implemented.
