Expert: Biometrics will not give Russians serious advantages over electronic signature

The Ministry of Digital Transformation plans to make biometric casts an alternative to an enhanced qualified electronic signature for performing legally significant actions, since it is believed that it is easier to hand over biometrics, and more difficult to fake, said Karen Kazaryan, a leading analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC).

“But personally, I am skeptical about the use of biometrics as an identifier,” the expert said. “Let’s look at where in the world biometric data is used as an identity card. These are India, Pakistan – countries where, until recently, the absence of any documents at all in people was a fairly common problem. When they started to create a system there, they initially began to build it on biometrics, skipping several stages in order to give access to electronic services to everyone, including an illiterate village grandfather, ”the expert noted.

In Russia, the entire infrastructure, according to Kazaryan, was built at the previous stage – the electronic signature. “The use of biometrics in comparison with UKEP will not give any serious advantages, especially since the process of collecting and administering biometric data remains quite complicated,” the expert believes.