The New Legs Race: Critical Perspectives On Biometrics in Iraq

Summary

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4 Biometric identification technologies include but are not limited to fingerprinting (in use since the 19th century), iris and retinal scanning, face and voice recognition, gait analysis, and implantable radio frequency identification devices (RFID).5 While each are powerful advances in their own rights, these technologies are most effective when combined to construct multimodal profiles of humans that can be stored in interoperable, networked databases like the Department of Defense Biometric Enterprise Solution.6 Such databases allow faster and more accurate identification of individuals by any affiliated personnel possessing a scanner and a data connection. [...] the degree and scope of that change is debatable, due in part to the uncertain appropriateness or effectiveness of many of the technologies.\n Scan the Sin, Not the Sinner The tragedy of an un-debated and unmitigated acceptance of a biometric solution to stability problems in Iraq is that there are viable alternatives that might better support the military in accomplishing not only the expedient objective of securing personnel and forces, but also the long-term end of promoting democracy to Iraqi civilians.

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The New Legs Race: Critical Perspectives On Biometrics in Iraq

THE UNITED STATES MILITARY faces a dual challenge in stability operations currently underway in Iraq. First, it must meet an immediate need by securing its own forces against an increasingly active and effective insurgency. second, it must pursue the long-term political objective of state building, or democracy promotion and construction, transforming Iraq into the first domino of the heretofore elusive democratic peace in the region.1 Unfortunately for the military, the proposed solutions to maintaining force safety in a dangerous political setting and fundamentally altering that setting are often mutually exclusive.

Biometric technologies represent, at best, a one-dimensional solution that not only fails to take into account one side of the dilemma, but also inhibits progress on the other side. Biometric technologies address the compressed timeframe under which the U.S. military operates in Iraq by bringing vanguard human identification and tracking capabilities to bear on a highly fluid and increasingly sophisticated insurgency operating among a population of over 26 million civilians. However, several political and social theories, including critical, realist, and structuration, suggest that the introduction of biometric identification and surveillance in Iraq will produce dubious results that make democratization less likely. These results range from a wider gap in civil-military relations in Iraq to the haunting prospect of a biometrically facilitated mass slaughter.

I propose that biometric solutions to U.S. stability operations requirements highlight a fundamental paradox of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Mounting time constraints, caus...

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