The hidden clues that reveal who you are
The hidden clues that reveal who you are
PROFESSOR DAME SUE BLACK, University of Lancaster: We all like to think we are unique. CAPTION: WHAT ARE THE INDIVIDUAL CLUES THAT REVEAL WHO YOU ARE? CAPTION: WHETHER THAT'S PHYSICAL CLUES, KNOWN AS BIOMETRICS... PROFESSOR NIAMH NIC DAEID, University of Dundee: So they might be your DNA, your fingerprints, iris scans or retinal patterns. CAPTION: OR ONLINE... PROFESSOR CARSTEN MAPLE, University of Warwick: We are always leaving digital traces wherever we go, and we can never be truly offli ne. CAPTION: DOES THIS MEAN THE AGE OF ANONYMITY IS OVER? IF SO, IS THAT A GOOD OR A BAD THING? PROF DAME SUE BLACK: There's always the suggestion that collecting vast amounts of biometrics is going to be used for something nefarious. But it can actually create some incredibly positive situations. CINDY YU, The Spectator: So there's a saying in Chinese, if you haven't done anything wrong, why would you be scared of ghosts? PROFESSOR CARSTEN MAPLE: Businesses are typically designed to make money and they will not have, in general, as much interest in protecting your rights. You are very much the product. CAPTION: THE HIDDEN CLUES THAT REVEAL WHO YOU ARE CAPTION: THE SEARCH FOR UNIQUENESS IS NOTHING NEW... PROF DAME SUE BLACK: Fingerprints are something that were used in very, very early Chinese pottery, for example. Where the potter would leave their fingerprint in the wet clay. CAPTION: FINGERPRINTS ARE ONE OF THE BEST - KNOWN FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION USED IN FORENSICS... BUT IT'S NOT AS FOOLPROOF AS IT MIGHT SEEM PROF DAME SUE BLACK: If you watch television and you read all these forensic fiction, fingerprints solve everything and the honest truth is they don't. The fingerprint in isolation has no value in telling you who the person is until you have so mething to compare it with. CAPTION: THAT'S THE CASE WITH MANY BIOMETRIC MARKERS... THEY ONLY WORK IF YOU HAVE AN EXTENSIVE DATABASE TO CHECK THEM AGAINST. CAPTION: THAT'S ALSO THE CASE WITH DNA PROF NIAMH NIC DAEID: DNA is still the gold standard when we can identify the source of the DNA, whose DNA it is. What we're not very good at understanding is how did it get there? So how did your DNA get on to the knife? Is it because you used the knife to stab somebody? Or is it because you shook hands with som ebody who used the knife to stab somebody? CAPTION: AND THERE'S ANOTHER AREA THAT'S EMERGING WITHIN THE FIELD OF BIOMETRICS... OUR HANDS PROF DAME SUE BLACK: If you look at the little skin creases that you have over your knuckles, they're different on ev ery finger, they're different across your two hands, they're different on identical twins. And when infrared light shines on your veins it interacts with the deoxygenated blood and your veins stand out like black tramlines. There is a really strong chance that the hand and of all the biometrics that we can see in the hand may well be that 'holy grail' that we search for which is, it's unique. CAPTION: WHAT WE DO ONLINE CAN ALSO LEAVE CLUES THAT REVEAL WHO WE ARE... PROFESSOR ALASTAIR BERESFORD, University of Cambridge: So there is a global trend across the world where computers collect more data. And therefore governments and corporations are locked in a race where they're trying to collect a mass amount of identifying information. CAPTION: THERE CAN BE H UGE BENEFITS TO THIS... MATTHEW RYDER QC, Matrix Chambers: Gathering data about people who live in a city or who live in a borough is now a critical part of the functioning government. If you want to allocate your resources properly you need the data. CA PTION: DATA IS NOW INVALUABLE AND CAN BE HARNESSED IN MANY WAYS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD. SUCH AS: - REDUCING THE SPREAD OF DISEASE - STOPPING TERROR ATTACKS - CATCHING CRIMINALS - HELPING IN HUMANITARIAN DISASTERS - TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE CAPTION: AND WE'RE JUST AT THE START OF THIS JOURNEY... PROF DAME SUE BLACK: Wouldn't it just be wonderful if you could put your hand or your finger on whatever devices, it knows exactly who you are, it knows exactly what your health statistics are, what the probability is of yo u catching cancer because of the gene that you've got the options are just limitless. CAPTION: BUT THE BIG QUESTIONS ARE WHO IS COLLECTING THE DATA - AND WHY? CAPTION: DO WE KNOW EVERYTHING IT WILL BE USED FOR AND HOW IT WILL BE KEPT SAFE? CAPTION: LOT S OF DATA IS ANONYMISED - SO CAN IT REALLY REVEAL WHO YOU ARE AS AN INDIVIDUAL? CAPTION: SOMETIMES INADVERTENTLY YES... PROF ALASTAIR BERESFORD: Netflix released what they thought was anonymised records of movie watching, and their aim was to try and imp rove their recommendation algorithms. In other words, if you've watched movies A, B and C you're really quite likely to enjoy watching movie D. Unfortunately researchers quickly realised they were able to cross - reference these anonymous records with IMDB, which is an online movie rating service. And once you can identify who someone is you can work out their sexual preferences to some degree of probability. CAPTION: ONE WOMAN FILED A LAWSUIT ARGUING SHE - AND OTHERS - COULD FACE REPERCUSSIONS IF THEIR SEXU ALITY BECAME PUBLIC. NETFLIX SETTLED THE CASE. CAPTION: THIS EXAMPLE OF CROSS - REFERENCING OF DATA WAS ACCIDENTAL. BUT IT HIGHLIGHTED HOW HARD IT CAN BE TO KEEP DATA ANONYMOUS. CAPTION: IN SOME PARTS OF THE WORLD, CORSS - REFERENCING OF DATA IS DELIBERATELY UNDERTAKEN... CAPTION: IN CHINA, THE GOVERNMENT IS PLANNING A SYSTEM WHICH WOULD PULL IN MULTIPLE DATA POINTS ON AN INDIVIDUAL TO CREATE A "SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE". CINDY YU: It would be taking in all sorts of data from local government, from your schools, from your workplaces, from your companies, where you go, your GPS data putting it into one single score which evaluates how trustworthy - in quotation marks - you are. Like an Uber score where, with a lower credit score, you might not be able to borrow mo ney, you might not be able to travel on public transport. CAPTION: MOST GOVERNMENTS HAVE NO PLANS OF THIS KIND - BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN OUR MOVEMENTS ARE NECESSARILY PRIVATE. PROF CARSTEN MAPLE: We're always in a cyber - physical space. Every place we go to will have some cyber element around it. There'll be cameras capturing information. There'll be things that are connecting to your phone that you may or may not be aware of. We are always leaving digital traces wherever we go and we can never be truly offl ine. CINDY YU: In Shenzhen, when you're crossing the road, there are CCTV cameras that use facial recognition to see if you're jaywalking or not and then identifying who that citizen is and then sometimes you'll be displayed on a big billboard on the othe r side of the road in a sort of 'name and shame' action. MATTHEW RYDER QC: What happens in China and in other countries is a cautionary lesson for all of us that unless you have proper regulation the gathering of your data is a real danger to our human r ights. CAPTION: "DATA HOARDING" IS WHERE DATA IS GATHERED WITHOUT A SPECIFIC PURPOSE IN MIND... IN CASE IT PROVES VALUABLE LATER. CAPTION: THIS WAS ONE OF THE ISSUES THAT THE GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION LAW - OR GDPR - IS DESIGNED TO TACKLE. IT AP PLIES IN THE EU AND THE UK AND IS DESIGNED TO PROTECT INDIVIDUAL DATA. CAPTION: THE FINES FOR MISUSE OF DATA ARE STIFF. BUT WITH THE SPEED OF CHANGE, IT CAN BE CHALLENGING FOR REGULATION TO KEEP UP. PROF CARSTEN MAPLE: The landscape is continually changi ng. Who would have thought ten years ago we'd have had all this collection that we have now? Who would have thought about the ways data can be used and abused. So regulation is always chasing where we are with the current technology. CAPTION: THE ISSUE OF CONSENT IS ALSO KEY - BUT IT'S NOT STRAIGHTFORWARD... PROF CARSTEN MAPLE: If they provide you with pages and pages of terms and conditions well, that's transparent, so we can all read those. However do we really have the time and the knowledge to read al l of those? No. So are we really in a situation where it's not transparent but it's apparent to us? Are we aware? PROF NIAMH NIC DAEID: Biometric data is very personal. It's your data because it's about you. They're your fingerprints or it's your DNA. Onc e it's given away it is incredibly hard, if not impossible, to take it back. CAPTION: THERE'S A DELICATE BALANCING ACT AT PLAY, BETWEEN THE BENEFITS DATA BRINGS TO SOCIETY AND CONCERNS OVER PRIVACY AND ETHICS. PROF DAME SUE BLACK: I have a real conflict between how much of my information I want to share and how much information I want to have available to me when I go to a crime scene. I want to be able to find the pieces of DNA, I want to be able to find the fingerprints. I want to be able to get every s ingle bit of information I can to make sure justice is served. But of course here I am, sitting in the middle of that crime scene, not wanting to give mine. MATTHEW RYDER QC: That old saying, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear that kind of approach doesn't value our privacy. If the government said, "We're going to put a camera in every single bedroom in the country that would film what happens in your bedroom, but we assure you we will only turn it on if we think there's suspicion." I thi nk most members of the public would say, "I don't have anything to hide but this is my bedroom, this is private." In reality, there are so many ways to gather data about you nowadays and it can give as detailed information, in some ways, about you as if yo u were having a camera in your bedroom. CAPTION: HOW AND WHY DATA IS COLLECTED, AND BY WHO, AND HOW IT'S STORED, USED AND REGULATED... THESE ALL PRESENT BIG CHALLENGES FOR SOCIETY. PROF NIAMH NIC DAEID: Large size datasets or databases are incredibly useful but the critical thing is that they are correctly used. That's going to be a very, very big question that we need to resolve as this digital word really starts to accelerate around us.