As a frequent world traveller, I am a user of a system called IRIS. IRIS is retina scanning system and once you have signed up to it and been validated by a scan of your retina, you can walk through an IRIS scanner and avoid the queue for immigration.

It’s a bit clunky but it works… So, I was intrigued when I saw a post from Toby Stevens titled “My eyes have expired” (read post here). Toby raises an important point. Apparently his passport was valid but his ‘other’ identity i.e. the IRIS identity had ‘expired’. On one hand, this is an inconvenience as Toby rightly points out. But consider the converse case and the paradox of privacy standards. If indeed we have standards and perfect communication between diverse privacy systems, is it not a risk to individuals? In other words, the lack of privacy standards and perfect interoperability prevents Big brother and in this case, is a good thing. No?