Woodward at Harvard on Biometric Data
Professor John D. Woodward Jr., Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Technology Assessment Group of Harvard University on February 25, 2016 where he discussed the international role of biometric data.
In his talk, Woodward drew on his experiences as the Director of the Department of Defense Biometrics Management Office at the height of the Iraq conflict from 2003-2005 to explain how biometric technologies, like computerized fingerprinting, played a very important role in identifying threats to US forces.
Woodward also provided a historical overview of biometrics, noting how the discipline largely developed in the second half of the 19th Century. He explained how biometrics like fingerprints came to be accepted by the legal system as scientifically valid evidence as early as 1905 in the UK and 1913 in the US. He also noted how the advent in the 1990s of large scale computerized fingerprinting transformed criminal justice because instead of waiting months for manually derived match results, computerized fingerprints could determine quickly if a person had been arrested previously.
He also advocated for the US government to prioritize biometric research and development as well as to create a global biometric information sharing environment to allow for more robust exchange of biometric data with the United States and its foreign partners.
John D. Woodward Jr. is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. During his twenty-year CIA career, John served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington, DC, East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.