Biometrics, the body identity: new exhibition at the Cité des télécoms

On February 10, the Cité des télécoms, the France Telecom Group’s business foundation, inaugurated its new exhibition on Biometrics, the body identity, which will run until December 31, 2008. Conceived by the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, and adapted by the Cité des Télécoms, through a partnership with Sagem Sécurité from the Safran Group and with the backing of the French data protection agency (CNIL).

“Putting your best foot forward” or “making the right impression” in order to get into certain places is nothing new. But showing your hand or face to your computer so that you can use it is somewhat unusual…Welcome to the biometric age.
Biometrics represents the series of IT techniques used to automatically identify a person based on his physical characteristics: fingerprints, face, iris, DNA, etc.
The development of biometrics is being driven by technological innovations as well as comfort and security requirements. But is it promising us a safer and more practical world or a world where suspicion rhymes with surveillance? Everything depends on how it is used and what legal and technical precautions are taken in this area.

The “Biometrics, body identity” exhibition takes stock of this issue for society, presenting the fundamentals of biometrics, its techniques, its practices as well as the ethical and legislative questions that it raises.

Visitors are invited to test out a number of interactive and fun biometric systems so that they can make up their own minds. For instance, they can record their fingerprint and face at the entrance for the exhibition under any pseudonym they want. They will then be personally welcomed by this pseudonym, if they are recognized, when they arrive in front of certain multimedia activities. The visitors’ biometric data recorded in this way makes up a temporary database, which is deleted every evening.

The exhibition is presented in three languages – French, English and German – and is available for people with various disabilities, with Braille charts, soundtracks and video with commentary in sign language.



The Cité des télécoms
In January 2007, the Cité des télécoms became the France Telecom Group’s business foundation aiming to support the promotion of scientific and technical culture linked to the telecoms sector with the public, while drawing on the exhibition center for the history and latest developments on telecommunications, as well as various elements for our company’s historical heritage, including Radôme.
The Cité des télécoms is located in Pleumeur Bodou in the Côtes d’Armor region. The Radôme, this enormous 50 meter sphere, inaugurated in 1962 and classed as a historical monument, has been awarded the 20th century heritage label and made it possible at the time to broadcast the first televised images live between the US and France, as well as broadcasts of telephone conversations worldwide.