A privacy protection architecture in sharing biometric information for NATO applications

In recent years, biometric technologies have been playing more and more important role in the Global War on Terror. As a NATO program, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) implemented the US biometric systems as part of ISAF force protection and overall security efforts in Afghanistan in February 2007. Sharing biometric data in combat applications to identify Red Force allows the alliance members to eliminate the terrorist´s advantage of anonymity. However, it raises privacy and legal concerns under the current system architecture when the system is used for identifying terrorist suspects and verifying NATO citizens. To address the challenge, a privacy protection architecture is presented that can reduce privacy violations and legal risks in sharing biometric data. The objective is to provide a privacy protection solution for the future development of NATO biometric system.