The deployment of biometric systems could have serious life long implications for the privacy and data protection rights of individuals. The use of appropriate biometric technologies permitting the creation of multiple trusted revocable protected biometric identities may present a response to this challenge. The paper presents a review from a legal perspective of these privacy enhancing technologies which are being developed in the 7th framework EU project TURBINE. It is argued that if privacy considerations are taken into account in the design and technology of biometric systems, this will have a positive influence on the review of the proportionality of the use of biometric systems.