Yoti endorses Biometrics Institute’s ethical principles

The seven ethical principles for biometrics launched in March by the Biometrics Institute have been endorsed by Yoti, the company announced in a blog post.

The Biometrics Institute launched the Ethical Principles for Biometrics at its annual U.S. meeting in March after they were formulated by The Institute’s Privacy Expert Group, along with privacy commissioners, biometrics experts, and government employees.

As one of the UK’s founding B-Corps, Yoti says it is already committed to ethical behavior beyond the legal requirement, in accordance with the first principle, and encouraging personal data ownership is one of the company’s founding principles, which fits with the second principle, according to the post. Yoti also cites the use of Yoti Age Scan by social networking site Yubo to help protect young people online as an example of its technology serving humans, as required by the third principle. The company has published a white paper explaining Yoti Age Scan in detail and has an external Guardian Council, addressing the fourth principle regarding justice and accountability, and built the AI age estimating software to be a privacy-preserving system, which fits with the sixth principle on privacy enhancement and system quality. Yoti’s B-Corp certification also attests to its recognition of the dignity of individuals and families, the company says.

For the seventh principle, which calls for equality in biometrics, Yoti trains its facial recognition technology with diverse data, and also includes demographic breakdowns of its accuracy rates in the Yoti Age Scan whitepaper (PDF).

Endorsing the Biometrics Institute’s Ethical Principles fits with Yoti’s Social Impact Strategy, under which the company also recently launched a Fellowship Program to support digital identification efforts in the developing world.

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best practices  |  biometrics  |  Biometrics Institute  |  ethics  |  Yoti