Wells, Alec (2025) A Privacy by Design Framework for One-to-Many Biometric Verification Systems. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

The rapid advancement of A.I-driven attacks, combined with our increasing reliance on A.I, raises pressing concerns regarding privacy, accountability, transparency, and compliance with data protection regulations, thereby heightening the risks to sensitive personal data. Biometric data, in particular, presents unique challenges, as they are commonly stored in centralised databases. Most critically, once compromised, unlike knowledge or ownership-based factors that can be easily replaced, biometric identifiers are largely immutable and may remain permanently vulnerable. These challenges highlight the need for a privacy-preserving frameworks that integrate robust security controls and ethical governance models, to ensure trust and resilience in one-to-many biometric verification systems.

Prior research indicates that voice biometrics offer a natural, non-intrusive, and convenient method for one-to-many user verification; however, concerns remain regarding the privacy and security of this approach. To address these issues, this thesis explores how the principles of Privacy by Design can be incorporated into a framework for secure one-to-many biometric systems, and presents a privacy-conscious, user-centred study on voice biometrics to inform the development of a new, privacy-enhanced framework for managing one-to-many biometric data. A novel method is proposed, leveraging Ethereum smart contracts and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to provide a decentralised storage solution that addresses user privacy concerns in a one-to-many biometric verification system. This method mitigates challenges associated with other blockchain-based systems, such as high gas fees and blockchain transparency, to prioritise user privacy preservation. A functional prototype demonstrates the viability of the approach, offering a robust, secure, and scalable solution for one-to-many voice biometric verification in privacy-sensitive applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering framework that harnesses the sophistication of distributed ledger technology to create a privacy-aware verification framework for one-to-many biometric systems grounded in Privacy by Design principles.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	T Technology > T Technology (General)
School/Department:	York Business School
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/15537

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