Official literature on biometrics from the UK Home Office defines bio-exempt as those not required to submit biometric data to the government, and specifies that children, amputees with one or no fingers, and diplomats are bio-exempt. The UK Home Office also described bio-exempt as ‘exempt from control.’ In his performative lecture Zach Blas will attempt to understand ‘bio-exempt’ as a paradigmatic descriptor for today's global security regime. Bio-exemption is a mode of biopolitical control: who has the legal right to be exempt from their embodied self and who has the right to remain unmarked, not indexed.