Biometrics: A New Mean of Surveillance and Migration Control

Abstract: We live in an era of advanced technological innovations and it is therefore difficult to acquire a proper overview of the different surveillance techniques deployed for the purpose of enhancing and administrating migration control. The intent of this paper is to disseminate one of the new technologies on the market: the biometric technology that is an identification and verification system based on measurements of biological traits. Different approaches are used to explore and investigate the technological functions, social structures and political justifications for their validity and their role in the implementation of the biometric technology. The paper also provides an overview of the different areas of political and social management that are affected by the implementation of the biometric techniques.The principal aim of this work is to examine how the implementation of the biometric techniques will affect privacy for all people, taking both information privacy and personal integrity into consideration. The second question deals with migration management, as the current implementation mainly involves travel documents. It focuses on the consequences of the so-called war on terror and its call for prevention of terrorism and irregular migration. The dilemma between national security and the right to privacy, public good and private interests, and the realms of state and individual rights are also discussed and analysed.Hence, the framework and the fundamental structure of this thesis are based on three core issues pertinent to the implementation of biometrics in the EU: threats posed on the right to privacy, securitization of migration, and intensification of surveillance and state control. The findings are used to identify the threats posed on right to privacy and the way this right is compromised, and the consequences of practices and policies in the field of migration that are discriminatory and exclusory. Lastly, by employing different theories, this paper examines why state seeks technological control over citizens and why individuals comply with state control and surveillance.