Code of

Conduct

Ethics in
Biometric

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology conducts research and development at its Center for Digital Safety & Security as part of national security research programmes such as KIRAS, in the framework of programmes of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), as well as on an international level in projects funded by the European Union. Austria is a showcase for European security research thanks to research programmes such as the Austrian security research funding programme KIRAS run by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF).

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Ethical, legal and data protection regulations

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology conducts research and development at its Center for Digital Safety & Security as part of national security research programmes such as KIRAS, in the framework of programmes of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), as well as on an international level in projects funded by the European Union. Austria is a showcase for European security research thanks to research programmes such as the Austrian security research funding programme KIRAS run by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism (BMLRT).

Both the Austrian Security Research programmes and those of the European Union have safety mechanisms or sets of rules to ensure that social acceptance as well as ethical and legal aspects are taken into account in the various research projects from the very beginning. For example, all EU-funded projects are subject to strict and transparent evaluation and selection criteria, examined by independent experts from a European ethics committee. Part of each project evaluation is a corresponding ethics opinion, on which a positive evaluation of the related research project depends.

The EU implements ethics boards for project evaluation, and instructs project applicants to set up appropriate ethics/legal/privacy advisory measures within the framework of the respective undertaking. These may take the form of special work packages for the experts from independent institutions who are involved.

This is clearly reflected in the holistic KIRAS concept, which relies on close cooperation between research, industry and end users to develop future-oriented technologies. After all, the socio-political “compatibility” of technology is a key issue. In all research projects and related measures, it is essential to ensure that the focus is clearly on the human being. Therefore, the comprehensive integration of humanities, social and cultural science (GSK) expertise in all research projects is a success factor for KIRAS.

Special note about data protection and privacy considerations at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

Protecting data and safeguarding privacy are essential in modern society, and create the fundamental basis of trust upon which a society’s cultural, social and economic development depends. Consequently, creating “security” is a core mission at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. In view of the many and constantly changing threats faced by our society, our task is to develop innovative approaches to combatting these threats. For that reason, a particular focus of the research undertaken at AIT lies in methods, architectures and technologies which take privacy-by-design approaches in order to integrate the greatest possible level of data security into any technical solution. Data security and privacy are sensitive issues and must be protected, making them the primary consideration in all research activity undertaken at AIT.