Episode 3: On Biometric Data and Events

As the collective events industry searches for guidance on how to safely restart events, in the absence of authority leadership and advice, we look to each other. Scientists, academics and health & safety consultants are faced with the challenge of providing answers to the many questions we ask. Journal articles, industry papers and respected magazines are issuing recommendations at record speed and every morning there are thousands of articles on COVID-19/SARS-COV2. Within these, we find indications on how we can improve risk assessment and what measures we can apply to our varied and unique industry. Even newspapers are suggesting easy to remember guidelines, such as ‘follow the four C’s‘.

One such trajectory is the use of biometric data capture to allow a person to attend an event. As someone who values privacy as a human right, I find it important that we consider the impact of such systems, both positive and negative, and view them within the bigger picture of our moral obligations. The ‘right to privacy’ encompasses personal identity and aspects of social and physical identity, including a person’s right to their image, biometric, genetic and electronic data (Beduschi, 2019). We are starting to see a shift in the attitude of private industry regarding the use of biometric technology, as giants like IBM and Amazon abandon facial recognition software as evidence of unethical use rise to the surface.