BIOMETRIC DATABASES: WHAT ARE THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE GHANAIAN AS A DATA SUBJECT?
Introduction In Ghana, biometric is currently being used in the workplace for access control to sensitive areas, financial e-transactions such as the e-zwich (charge cards) and by the government for passports, national ID and hopefully to be deployed in e-voting. This article intends to look at the dangers of holding such biometric database and then bring to fore what we may have to do to protect the Ghanaian as a data subject. As much as possible this article will be limited to provoking some of the legal implications for reflection. Biometric databases generally refer to storing digitized templates of biological information unique to an individual such as retina or iris, fingerprints, voice prints, and of face geometry which is matched with what is produced when a person physically presents herself at a reader. There are basically two ways of storing such digitized templates, on a card which is under the control of owner (data subject) and centralized which is under the control of