PROTECT (Pervasive and UseR Focused BiomeTrics BordEr ProjeCT): D2.5 Societal impact report (version 1)

This document is deliverable D2.5 (version 1) – “Societal impact report” of Task T2.5 within WP2 – “Privacy” of the PROTECT project. The aim of D2.5 is to identify and address the ethical and legal implications of the technical solutions being developed in the context of the PROTECT project by summarizing discussions between the project partners and exchanges with the Ethical and Legal Advisory Group (ELAG) as well as with other external experts.
The overall PROTECT research project addresses both public security missions (border control) and societal concerns (fundamental rights and social values). The development of a new framework for border control (from physical to increasingly digital borders) and related new methods for the management and control of population flows at borders (e.g. biometric passport, ABC gates, constitution of large scale IT systems managing visa applications, contactless biometric border control) instantiate the tension between two constitutive obligations linking modern states and its citizens, namely between freedom and security. The main ethical challenge in this matter is to find the proportional balance between the legitimate interests at stake in the exercise of border control missions and the preservation of fundamental rights, such as the rights to privacy and data protection of travellers, including both European and third-country nationals. Such concerns appear at the core of PROTECT proposal.
In order to ensure that ethical and legal aspects are thoroughly investigated and addressed within the PROTECT project, a specific work package – “WP2 Privacy” – is dedicated to explore the privacy issues raised by the PROTECT system, translate those issues into operational requirements usable for the system designers and assess the privacy compliance of the technological constructs. In this WP2:
- Ethical and legal experts at UNAMUR study the legal frameworks, conduct acceptability studies of different biometric solutions and examine ethical and privacy issues related to the PROTECT system;
- An Ethical & Legal Advisory Group (ELAG) consisting of three independent experts with extensive experience in privacy or biometrics and identity management issues independently monitor and review the activities and outputs of the project.
This first version of D2.5 – “Societal impact report” – contains a summary of ethical and legal discussions held during 3 different events:
1. A meeting “on the impact of privacy regulations on system architecture & technical solutions” which was organized on 4th July 2017 at the University of Reading. The objective of this meeting was for UNAMUR to present to the other partners the implications of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the processing of biometric data in the context of border control;
2. A first ELAG meeting which took place at University of Reading on July 5th 2017. The objective of that meeting was to discuss the ethical and legal implications of a potential scenario implementing the PROTECT solution taking into account existing and forthcoming EU regulations in the field of border control and data protection;
3. A PROTECT panel at the 11th International conference on computers, privacy and data protection (CPDP2018) organized by UNAMUR and which took place on January 25th in Brussels. This panel was entitled “privacy and data protection issues related to the use of contactless multimodal biometrics at border-crossings” and was the opportunity to share some views with important actors such as the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the JHA Counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU.
Please note that this deliverable is a first version of D2.5. A second version D2.5 – Societal impact report is due at M34 and will integrate the next discussions and exchanges on ethical and legal issues with the ELAG and other external experts.