TY - JOUR

T1 - Wearing Someone Else’s Face

T2 - Biometric Technologies, Anti-spoofing and the Fear of the Unknown

AU - Grünenberg, Kristina

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Spoofing denotes attempts to cheat biometric technologies with artefacts (e.g. fake fingers, masks). This way of circumventing biometric systems has recently generated great interest in the line of work known as ‘anti-spoofing’, which is responsible for developing counter measures. Part of the work of biometric laboratories revolves around identifying imaginable spoofs and spoofers and developing technologies that can detect real from fake bodies. Based on fieldwork among researchers in a biometric lab, at international conferences where policy-makers, security officials and industry discuss biometric technologies, the article shows how the figure of the spoofer epitomizes certain concerns and brings with it particular types of practices and threat scenarios. Biometric technologies, it is argued, are constantly changing shape in response to the imagined, potential threats embodied by the spoofer in,for example, state security contexts and at borders, where fears of the potentialconsequences of uncontrolled migration, terrorism and global crime prevail

AB - Spoofing denotes attempts to cheat biometric technologies with artefacts (e.g. fake fingers, masks). This way of circumventing biometric systems has recently generated great interest in the line of work known as ‘anti-spoofing’, which is responsible for developing counter measures. Part of the work of biometric laboratories revolves around identifying imaginable spoofs and spoofers and developing technologies that can detect real from fake bodies. Based on fieldwork among researchers in a biometric lab, at international conferences where policy-makers, security officials and industry discuss biometric technologies, the article shows how the figure of the spoofer epitomizes certain concerns and brings with it particular types of practices and threat scenarios. Biometric technologies, it is argued, are constantly changing shape in response to the imagined, potential threats embodied by the spoofer in,for example, state security contexts and at borders, where fears of the potentialconsequences of uncontrolled migration, terrorism and global crime prevail

KW - Biometric technologies

KW - laboratories

KW - spoofing

KW - masks

KW - face recognition

U2 - 10.1080/00141844.2019.1705869

DO - 10.1080/00141844.2019.1705869

M3 - Journal article

VL - 87

SP - 223

EP - 240

JO - Ethnos

JF - Ethnos

SN - 0014-1844

IS - 2

ER -