A Requirement Analysis for Privacy Preserving Biometrics in View of Universal Human Rights and Data Protection Regulation

Data Protection (DP) and Universal Human Rights are extremely relevant to biometrics, where inherently private data is used for authentication purposes. In this context this paper stresses that there are significant challenges beyond biometric authentication. For example, it has been shown in the existing literature that medical information of a skin disease from a fingerprint, symptoms of diabetes on the retina, or diseases affecting one's walk can be extracted from biometric recordings. We address the derived privacy challenges in biometrics by a careful review of relevant aspects of the universal human rights from UN documents and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with a first identification and enumeration of relevant attributes. From the derived privacy sensitive attributes and respective requirements, de-identification approaches to protection of soft biometrics in face and fingerprints are explored. In consideration of these techniques, there is the question of what constitutes legal and moral biometric signal processing presently in the state-of-the-art, as well as motivation for further work towards fulfilling the criteria.