Legal Aspects of the Use of Biometric Students’ Identification for Distant and Online Learning: Russian Perspective

The use of distant and online learning technologies has become a global trend in the educational sphere. These technologies open up new opportunities for expanding the educational space of modern universities, making education more "accessible" and more universal. The implementation of educational programs in the online environment faces a number of practical difficulties, including the quite natural question of the need for accurate identification of the user-student, as a consumer of educational service. Currently used identification technologies, which are increasingly based on biometrics, raise many questions both in terms of their "accuracy", and in terms of information security, data protection, respect for privacy and achieving their ultimate purpose of use. In practice, biometric identification technologies and, first of all, facial recognition technologies are not so perfect as they might be, and not only in the field of education. Nevertheless, they are still actively promoted by the Russian state as the only effective solution. The article attempts to consider the negative aspects of the use of biometric identification technologies in the educational sphere in the light of the recent decisions of the Russian government to use a Unified Biometric System (national biometric identification database) for midterm, final or final state examination in universities.