Roundtable: Balancing privacy with biometric techniques

Balancing privacy with biometric techniques in a commercial context

29 January 2020

Macquarie Group, London

Overview

Date:	29 January 2020
Times:	09.00 - 09.30 - Registration 09.30 - 17.00 - Roundtable, Networking Lunch included
Location:	Macquarie Group, London
Host:	Olga Ganopolsky, General Counsel - Privacy and Data, Macquarie Group, Australia

A one day Roundtable for companies to exchange experience on how they are implementing and using biometric techniques in different scenarios and plan to use them in the future.

Facial recognition is a common example of a biometric technique and attracts the attention of privacy regulators to its use in public areas, such as railway stations and to help identity individuals. Meanwhile companies are increasingly using voice or facial recognition and other biometric techniques in a variety of commercial and employment related contexts such as attendance in the workplace and fraud prevention in financial services.

The objective of this Roundtable is for companies to exchange experience on how they are implementing and using biometric techniques in different scenarios and plan to use them in the future. While the technology is constantly developing, the question facing companies, as always, is just because a technique can be developed, what are, and should be, the legal and ethical constraints on its use? Informing customers and staff of use of biometric techniques is necessary and has a preventative role. What would privacy regulators regard as achieving a fair balance between use of a technique to reduce fraud and fairness to customers? How have different companies approached this subject?

We will learn about the latest tech developments in this field and explore current practice to assess what is not only lawful but also learn about fair collection and use of personal data in different company contexts.

Follow-up conclusions and recommendations to the ICO to assist its drafting of guidance on biometric data will be produced by the PL&B Editorial Team after the Roundtable. This summary of the issues and action points will be on a non-attributable basis so that everyone can speak freely. Any speaker who wishes would be identified by name or organisation in this document. The draft report will be circulated in advance to the roundtable participants so that everyone will have an opportunity to comment on it before it is submitted to the ICO.

6 CPE credits available