Biometrics in ambient intelligence

The security concerns due to the September 11
and later terroristic attacks, fostered the development of
more advanced techniques for biometric identification.
This had a positive impact to research and deployment of
these technologies, founding a basis for security-related
applications. At the same time, the privacy concerns for the
misuse of personal information have hindered the application
of the same technologies wherever their introduction
could not be enforced. The risk is for the scientific development
to be blocked by contradictory needs, which, in
turn, often derive from misconceptions or misunderstanding
of the real potential of biometric technologies. Within
this context, ambient intelligence allows to consider the
relation between biometrics and privacy under a different
perspective. In fact, as most of times we are able to
maintain social relations without the need to know each
other’s identity (consider for example the case of a customer
relating with an attendant at a department store), in
the same way biometric technologies can facilitate the
man–machine interaction (to better provide useful services)
without the need to determine the user’s full identity. Also
in the case of security applications, most often may be
sufficient to retrieve ancillary information about a subject
rather than determining his/her identity. This paper analyzes
the potential of biometric technologies within the
general scope of ambient intelligence, trying to identify some key technological issues which may respond to privacy
concerns. Some example applications are considered
where by exploiting the information contained in biometric
data, such as the facial expression or other, non visual,
measurements, it is possible to better relate the user with
the environment and provide a substantial input to drive the
services provided, without compromising his privacy.