Ethics Analysis & Concerns

With this behavior prominent industry-wide, our product finds itself in an interesting ethical position. Our users will entrust us with one of their most personal and individual characteristic about themselves, their fingerprint ID -- a literal biological identifier. As with any organization that deals with security, the trust we build with our clients is our largest asset. The most basic contract we establish between the client and our product is ensuring that the only entities that have access to their information are themselves, and our product/service. Breaking that contract by selling or misusing user fingerprint data, regardless of how the terms of services and use are established, is highly unethical based solely on the foundation of our mission. Should our product find itself materialized commercially, we should never, could never, and would never seek profitability through the sale of any and all user data.

While we may uphold our foundations and moral principles of securing user biological data with steadfast resolve, when facing the dilemma of whether or not the trust between our product and our users can be compromised by law enforcement and the government, it is important to realize the moral grey zone that is established with such a conflict. While yes, we are going to stick with our principles, in the face of law enforcement, the US legal system reigns supreme over organizations and the repercussions of going against the tide can be staggering. Therefore, it may be viable to take note and precedence from a previous US court case, Carpenter V. United States, a landmark Supreme Court Case were it was established that law enforcement require a court signed warrant in order to access individual user data. With this precedent, we can find a middle ground that wouldn't break the contract between our users and our product, and would not put us a precarious legal situation.