Eight case studies on regulating biometric technology show us a path forward

Amba Kak was in law school in India when the country rolled out the Aadhaar project in 2009. The national biometric ID system, conceived as a comprehensive identity program, sought to collect the fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs of all residents. It wasn't long, Kak remembers, before stories about its devastating consequences began to spread. "We were suddenly hearing reports of how manual laborers who work with their hands--how their fingerprints were failing the system, and they were then being denied access to basic necessities," she says. "We actually had starvation deaths in India that were being linked to the barriers that these biometric ID systems were creating. So it was a really crucial issue."