New legislation is asking Massachusetts’ welfare office to investigate the feasibility of using biometrics to administrate state benefits, according to a State House News Service article by Andy Metzger on MassLive.com. The legislation was part of an omnibus budget amendment that passed through the House with a 158-0 vote earlier this week.
Its main aim is, of course, to cut down on welfare fraud, given the unique authentication capabilities of biometric technology. House Minority Leader Brad Jones, the Republican who spearheaded efforts to include the biometrics proposal in the budget, explained via his office that similar fingerprint-based programs have already helped to save state governments millions of dollars elsewhere in the country, citing pilot programs in New Jersey and Texas. Indeed, and similar programs have been implemented in India for much the same reason, as part of that country’s ambitious Aadhaar national biometric ID project.
Still, the legislation could reveal this to be a politically sensitive issue in the US, where efforts to install public biometric authentication systems have sometimes been met with resistance. For example, city workers in San Francisco recently staged vehement protests against new biometric attendance-tracking systems for employees of a couple of museums in that city; it’s not hard to imagine an even bigger uproar over privacy violations in a system meant to identify welfare recipients. But if state officials can make the case for such a system based on the savings it would offer to taxpayers, it could prove very palatable for the general public.
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April 30, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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