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Body Issues (Gender, Ethnicity, Disability and Age-related issues)

Sensitive bodily issues may affect biometrics and personal detection technologies and be used to categorize and stigmatize the most vulnerable groups. This could be further impaired by new X-ray body-scanning devices, which can see through clothing and show a person's naked body. These devices could also expose highly personal details such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of breasts and genitals. Some populations have difficulty using certain biometric capture devices. Difficulties may be encountered with the degree of alignment necessary in the feature capturing process or with certain inherent characteristics of a given target population (e.g. the elderly tend to have very dry skin, which can make adequate contact with certain types of fingerprint capture devices difficult; facial recognition of children is often problematic). Most biometric systems and some detection technologies can also collect ancillary information like gender, age, height, face morphology, skin and eye colour. As a consequence these technologies could be surreptitiously used for ethnic classification. The role played by ethnic classification on identity documents in crimes of genocide in Rwanda (not to mention the infamous "J-stamp" introduced on ID cards by Nazi Germany) is well known. If no safeguard is provided, data collected during screening procedures and identification might become in certain political regimes a tool for ethnic classification or other kind of mass categorisation, whose ethical and political consequences could be appalling.

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