A major campaign is needed to win public trust in the looming era of “biometric” security, a new report warned today.

Biometric technologies – fingerprinting, iris, face and hand recognition and DNA identity testing – will become common in daily life within a few years, says the European Commission.

But first governments must set out limits on its use and convince citizens their existing privacy and human rights will be respected.

Biometrics are human features that can be measured and used for identification purposes.

Facial patterns and fingerprints are the obvious examples: less well-known biometrics are ear geometry, gait – the way a person walks – and even body odour.

EU ministers have already agreed to introduce biometrics in passports, visas and residence permits, starting next year.

Now the Commission says the march of modern security techniques must be matched by high levels of “user acceptance“.

The 166-page report by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre was drawn up at the request of Euro-MPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

Delivered in Brussels this afternoon, the report contains more than a hint of “Big Brother” in its analysis of the biometric advances which will, it says, help makes Europe’s borders more secure.

Biometrics will bring “improved convenience and value” to individuals, says the report – and once the public is accustomed to using biometrics at borders, biometrics in commerce and industry will follow.

The use of biometrics may challenge trust between citizen and state, raising fears about privacy in a “surveillance society“, the report goes on.

But biometrics also have the potential to increase privacy because the technology allows authentication without necessarily revealing a person’s identity.

It will be up to governments to reassure people: “The purpose of each biometric application should be clearly defined,” says the report.

“Clarity of purpose is needed to avoid ’function creep’ and false expectations of what biometrics can achieve. Such clarity is particularly needed to ensure user acceptance.”

The report admits that biometrics, like other security and checking systems, can never be 100% reliable.

Tests at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory in 2001 showed that automated face recognition biometrics had a false rejection rate of one in 10, and a false acceptance rate of one in 100.

In the same tests, the best-performing fingerprint recognition systems had a false rejection rate of six in 100, and a false acceptance rate of one in 1,000.

Iris recognition tests showed a false rejection rate of two in 100 and a false acceptance rate of one in 10,000. The chance of two irises being identical is estimated at one in 10 to the power of 78.

On DNA as a biometric identifier, the report says there is a one in six billion chance that two unrelated people share the same DNA profile.

DNA identification as envisaged, uses the “non-coding” parts, so a DNA template holds no genetic information.

The problem is that a DNA test currently takes four to five hours. However, the time should be halved in the near future.

Hand-geometry checking can be a simple and cost-effective verification system for small target samples of about 500 people, says the report.

It is has been introduced for use in a “frequent traveller” programme at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and for accelerated air passenger checking systems at nine American airports.