“PLEASE put your hand on the scanner,” a receptionist at a doctor’s office at New York University Langone Medical Center said to me recently, pointing to a small plastic device on the counter between us. “I need to take a palm scan for your file.”
뉴욕 타임즈에서 가까운 장래에 우리 몸에 강제적으로 칩을 찍는 시대가 도래할 것이라는 기사를 올렸습니다.
이미 공교육 기관에서 점심식사 제공을 위해 바이오메트릭 핸드 스캔 시스템을 설치하고 있고, 기자가 뉴욕에 있는 렝곤 대학 병원(New York University Langone Medical Center)을 방문했을 때 손에 삽입된 칩을 확인하겠다는 이유로 병원 접수처에서 스캐너에 손을 올려 놓으라는 지시를 받았다는 것입니다.
그래서 영화감독 아론 루소의 말처럼 모든 사람들이 몸에 칩을 받도록 하겠다는 엘리트들의 목표처럼 정말로 몸에 칩을 삽입하는 그런 날이 머지 않아 도래 할 것이라고 말하고 있습니다
“PLEASE put your hand on the scanner,” a receptionist at a doctor’s office at New York University Langone Medical Center said to me recently, pointing to a small plastic device on the counter between us. “I need to take a palm scan for your file.”
I balked.
As a reporter who has been covering the growing business of data collection, I know the potential drawbacks — like customer profiling — of giving out my personal details. But the idea of submitting to an infrared scan at a medical center that would take a copy of the unique vein patterns in my palm seemed fraught.
The receptionist said it was for my own good. The medical center, she said, had recently instituted a biometric patient identification system to protect against identity theft.
I reluctantly stuck my hand on the machine. If I demurred, I thought, perhaps I’d be denied medical care.
Next, the receptionist said she needed to take my photo. After the palm scan, that seemed like data-collection overkill. Then an office manager appeared and explained that the scans and pictures were optional. Alas, my palm was already in the system.
No longer the province of security services and science-fiction films, biometric technology is on the march. Facebook uses facial-recognition software so its members can automatically put name tags on friends when they upload their photos. Apple uses voice recognition to power Siri. Some theme parks take digital fingerprints to help recognize season pass holders. Now some hospitals and school districts are using palm vein pattern recognition to identify and efficiently manage their patients or students — in effect, turning your palm into an E-ZPass.
But consumer advocates say that enterprises are increasingly employing biometric data to improve convenience — and that members of the public are paying for that convenience with their privacy.
Fingerprints, facial dimensions and vein patterns are unique, consumer advocates say, and should be treated as carefully as genetic samples. So collecting such information for expediency, they say, could increase the risks of serious identity theft. Yet companies and institutions that compile such data often fail to adequately explain the risks to consumers, they say.
“Let’s say someone makes a fake ID and goes in and has their photo and their palm print taken as you. What are you going to do when you go in?” said Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum, an advocacy group in San Diego. “Hospitals that are doing this are leaping over profound security issues that they are actually introducing into their systems.”
THE N.Y.U. medical center started researching biometric systems a few years ago in an effort to address several problems, said Kathryn McClellan, its vice president who is in charge of implementing its new electronic health records system. More than a million people in the New York area have the same or similar names, she said, creating a risk that medical personnel might pull up the wrong health record for a patient. Another issue, she said, was that some patients had multiple records from being treated at different affiliates; N.Y.U. wanted an efficient way to consolidate them.
Last year, the medical center adopted photography and palm-scan technology so that each patient would have two unique identifying features. Now, Ms. McClellan said, each arriving patient has his or her palm scanned, allowing the system to automatically pull up the correct file.
“It’s a patient safety initiative,” Ms. McClellan said. “We felt like the value to the patient was huge.”
N.Y.U.’s system, called PatientSecure and marketed by HT Systems of Tampa, has already scanned more than 250,000 patients. In the United States, over five million patients have had the scans, said Charles Yanak, a spokesman for Fujitsu Frontech North America, a division of Fujitsu, the Japanese company that developed the vein palm identification technology.
Yet, unless patients at N.Y.U. seem uncomfortable with the process, Ms. McClellan said, medical registration staff members don’t inform them that they can opt out of photos and scans.
“We don’t have formal consent,” Ms. McClellan said in a phone interview last Tuesday.
That raises red flags for privacy advocates. “If they are not informing patients it is optional,” said Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University Law School with an expertise in data privacy, “then effectively it is coerced consent.”
He noted that N.Y.U. medical center has had recent incidents in which computers or USB drives containing unencrypted patient data have been lost or stolen, suggesting that the center’s collection of biometric data might increase patients’ risk of identity theft.
Ms. McClellan responded that there was little chance of identity theft because the palm scan system turned the vein measurements into encrypted strings of binary numbers and stored them on an N.Y.U. server that is separate from the one with patients’ health records. Even if there were a breach, she added, the data would be useless to hackers because a unique key is needed to decode the number strings. As for patients’ photos, she said, they are attached to their medical records.
Still, Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at the N.Y.U. center, recommended that hospitals do a better job of explaining biometric ID systems to patients. He himself recently had an appointment at the N.Y.U. center, he recounted, and didn’t learn that the palm scan was optional until he hesitated and asked questions.
“It gave me pause,” Dr. Caplan said. “It would be useful to put up a sign saying ‘We are going to take biometric information which will help us track you through the system. If you don’t want to do this, please see’ ” an office manager.
Other institutions that use PatientSecure, however, have instituted opt-in programs for patients.
At the Duke University Health System, patients receive brochures explaining their options, said Eliana Owens, the health system’s director of patient revenue. The center also trains staff members at registration desks to read patients a script about the opt-in process for the palm scans, she said. (Duke does not take patients’ photos.)
“They say: ‘The enrollment is optional. If you choose not to participate, we will continue to ask you for your photo ID on subsequent visits,’ ” Ms. Owens said.
Consent or not, some leading identity experts see little value in palm scans for patients right now. If medical centers are going to use patients’ biometric data for their own institutional convenience, they argue, the centers should also enhance patient privacy — by, say, permitting lower-echelon medical personnel to look at a person’s medical record only if that patient is present and approves access by having a palm scanned.
Otherwise, “you are enabling another level of danger,” said Joseph Atick, a pioneer in biometric identity systems who consults for governments, “instead of using the technology to enable another level of privacy.”
At my request, N.Y.U. medical center has deleted my palm print.
뉴욕타임즈 기사인데요...ㅠㅠ
그렇네요
내가 진보진영의 글 퍼오면 동의한 것 아니냐 하고
몰매를 맞아봐서요
ㅋㅋ
이건 신앙도 신학도 아무것도 아니다.
시조(시대의 징조)를 읽으랬더니 타임즈를 읽고 있고나... 그것도 자기 맘대로... 아이고 두야!
짐승의 표가 일요일이고 적그리스도가 교황권이라고 그렇게 떠들던 인간들이 이젠 베리칩까지 들고 나올 줄이야.
아이고 두야! 제발 미몽에서 깨어나자! 에프알비, 유엔, 이유, 프리메이슨 같은 가쉽거리나 줏어오지 말고 진실되게 예수만 바라라! 부끄럽다! 제발!
시대의 징조를 읽을려면 타임즈도 읽어야지....이 사람아...그럼 읽는사람이 자기맘대로 읽지 니맘대로 읽남?
베리칩이 짐승의표는 아니지만....이것도 하나의 엮이는 끄나플이 될줄 누가 아나? 이 사람아...
신이 아닌이상..... 남의 의견도 존중할 줄 알아야지...그 사람은 그렇게 생각할 수도 있는것이지.....
아이구 두야 하면 상대가 두가 없다는거냐? 아니면 유가 두가 크다는거냐?
나도 아이고 두야!ㅋㅋㅋ
상대를 무시하는글...아이구 두야!!
창피라니? 니의 에리튜가 더 챙핍니당...니나 잘하세요 ~ ㅋ 글투에서 나타나는 쓸데없는교만 ㅋ
결국 베리칩으로 낙찰하셨군요
666을 이젠 다른 것으로 포장하기 없기입니다
전자 손도장이라....
손가락 짤리면 다른 손가락에 또 심어야겠네요
짐승의 표가 베리칩이라....
어쨋던 해석도 진화합니다
진화....
어디서 많이 듣던 소리이지요?