About the project

Project financed by Czech Science Foundation 16-26910S: Biometric Data and Their Specific Legal Protection

Duration: January 2016 - December 2018

Biometric data represent a specific category of personal data.By their nature they enable unique identification of individuals since this data has a character of an identifier which represents both information about an individual itself as well as an identifying element linking the information with this particular individual. Biometric data are biological or behavioral characteristics of humans that distinguish them from other people and can be used after specific processing for automatic recognition of persons in information systems. Biometric data are used in practice for various purposes, for instance for unlocking smartphones and laptops, for access control to work spaces or private buildings (fingerprint), performing written legal acts (dynamic biometric signature), performing oral legal acts (voice recognition for telephone banking), or other authentication (biometric facial recognition, iris or retina scan). The use of biometrics for identification and authentication is continuously increasing. The question remains to what extent the law is prepared to deal with new and specific risks related to the technologies for processing biometric data.

The proposed project shall examine the Czech legal approach to processing of biometric data in the private sector and its public law protection. Namely the project aims at clarifying the position of biometric data within the data protection framework while taking in account a wider perspective of the European data protection legal reform, the recent Czech private law reform as well as the existing constitutional law. The main focus of the project will be on creating a comprehensive biometric data classification indicating level of vulnerability in potential misuse, development of a methodology for integrating future biometric data into this classification and identification of best practices in both legal and technical fields ensuring a desirable level of privacy protection as well as the legitimate interests of private subjects processing biometric data.