Critics

Exhibitions

Big Brother’s bag of biometric tricks

Exhibition

Octavi Planells | 7 may 2010

Exhibition: Are you single? Biometrics: Interact and discover your identity
Centre: Obra Social Caixa Sabadell
(c/ d'en Font, 25, 08201, Sabadell)
Phone: 902.33.55.66
Email: obrasocial@caixasabadell.es
Target audience: general public

Someday, all identity cards will cease to exist. Go ahead and start bidding a fond farewell to the passport and credit cards; even the days of the Social Security card are numbered. Perhaps the same goes for the passwords to access our e-mail account or Facebook profile. Today, in the eyes of Big Brother, we are nothing but a number, when, in reality, our body is full of inimitable and completely impossible to falsify traits. Someday, IDs, passwords and bank cards will be replaced by some anatomical feature that characterizes us, something that make us totally and undeniably unique.

Apparently ripped straight from the pages of a science fiction story, these speculations do not sound too far-fetched after visiting the exhibition Are you single? Biometrics: Interact and discover your identity, which will be open to the public till July 27 at Caixa Sabadell main office for Social Work. The exhibition, while located in a modest space, is thorough as well as entertaining. Based on interaction and play, it was designed and produced by the Cité des Sciencies et de l’Industrie in Paris in 2005, with the collaboration of Sagem Securité, and was later adapted in 2008 by the Cité des Telécoms.

Biometrics, in its broadest sense, is the scientific discipline of measuring life spans as well as any and all other characteristics or activities about a given organism that can be quantified: the size of a blue whale, the maximum height a flea can jump, the speed at which a bacterium multiplies by a thousand or the range of sound frequencies a bat is able to capture.

But in the case of humans, biometrics has developed to focus intensively on looking for those characteristics that make us different from each other and, with this valuable information, on the creation of software and automated mechanisms for the detection and identification of individuals. The exhibition Are you single? deals precisely with his most 'human' subsection of the field of biometrics.

The modules of the exhibition explain various aspects of the subject of biometric: its history, the most unique characteristics of humans, the technologies being developed for more efficient identification, its applications in everyday life, the storage of personal data, legislation for privacy protection and the ethical implications that this entails.

The success of the exhibition Are you single? (it has attracted more than 11,000 visitors since November) probably lies in two aspects related to the ego inherent in every human being: first, the innate curiosity we all possess about ourselves; and second, the need to feel different from anyone else. Interactive modules allow visitors to highlight some of the their own facial features, fingerprints, iris coloration or body measurements. In the end, one leaves satisfied: human variation is infinite, but repetition it not.

To take full advantage of the exhibition, it is recommended to register on a computer at the beginning of the visit. The modules of the exhibition will then identify the visitor from the previously recorded information. The fact that the devices identify you as soon as you put your finger on the reader or smile before a camera provides a good laugh for some while annoying others. In any case, everyone wants to find out how the machine was able to do it. This public exhibition succeeds at its double goal of shedding light on the scientific foundations of these technologies as well as illustrating with real examples their applications in security systems in the field of criminology and, more generally, in our day-to-day life.

Do we need to go around loaded down with cards and other documents in order to identify ourselves or simply to go shopping? Wouldn’t it be simpler, cheaper and more reliable to use, for example, our fingers tips? Will the day arrive when we will all be public figures? Do these technological advances threaten our privacy? These are the exact questions you will ask yourself after visiting the exhibition “Are you single?” Do not let it get away; catch it while you still can.

Subjects of the article