EDRI - Compulsory Identification

The European Commission continues to pressure for early fingerprinting

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:21:40 +0100

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In spite of the recommendation of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, that the minimum age for fingerprinting should be 14, a spokesperson from the European Commission (EC) expressed on 2 April 2008 the EC intention to push for fingerprinting children starting at the age of six, in order to include the information in the biometric passports.

Jacques Barrot, the Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner, considered that "The proposals we put forward are balanced ones", explaining that fingerprinting was an important tool in fighting human trafficking.

During the meeting on 12 February 2008 the high-level Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum (SCIFA)/Mixed Committee discussed the age

UK beat police will have access to national mugshot database

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:07:41 +0000

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On 18 March 2008, Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the UK National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), told the Commons Home Affairs Committee, during the final evidence session of a year-long inquiry on the surveillance society, that the police was developing a national database of mugshots to be used with face recognition technology that would match CCTV images with offenders.

A pilot system has started with three local police forces that have gathered during the last 18 months a database including more than 750 000 face images. About 7.7 million euro has been allocated so far on developing the technology that will be nationally launched in 2009.

Neyroud stated that he hoped to have the beat police equipped with advanced

Information Commissioner warns against fingerprinting at new UK terminal

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:04:29 +0000

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Mr. Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner warned Heathrow airport operator BAA that the plans to fingerprint all passengers at the new Terminal 5 may breach the UK Data Protection Act.

The 5.5 billion euro worth Terminal 5 was opened by the Queen on 16 March and is due to receive its first passengers on 27 March 2008. The airport plans to apply security measures that involve fingerprinting all passengers including domestic ones claiming fingerprinting was necessary so that all passengers could mix freely in Terminal 5 shopping mall area. Fingerprinting is already being applied for domestic passengers at Terminal 1. The passengers place a hand on a scanner which records four fingerprints and

Wales said no to ID cards

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:23:58 +0000

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Welsh Assembly Government proposal for a "smart card" to be used to access public services in Wales was considered by civil liberties groups as a way of introducing identity cards "through the back door" and was rejected by the Liberal Democrats supported by the Labour Party members as well.

The Government has claimed that the card was aimed at improving the way people use library and travel services but Suw Charman, founder of the EDRi-member Open Rights Group, considers the scheme as "pointless". "I haven't seen an argument about what's wrong with the existing cards. (...) Why do we need to put all this information on one smart card that's going to keep a log on what people do and where they go? It's treating people like

PI: Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:39:39 +0000

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UK-based human rights group Privacy International (PI) published at the end of last year the 2007 ranking assessment of the state of privacy in 47 countries, including all European Union member states.

The raking is based on the Privacy & Human Rights reports produced since 1997 by PI together with US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and is taking into consideration several criteria such as constitutional & statutory protection and privacy enforcement, biometric ID cards, data-sharing, video surveillance, communication interceptions and data retention.

According to the authors, the project wants to "recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the

Civil liberties threatened by the new centralized EU fingerprint database

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:14:51 +0100

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A proposal for the creation of a centralized database of fingerprints from all 27 EU countries was included in a new European Commission document that sets out the goals for 2008.

The fingerprints database is to be operational by the end of 2008 and it will include sensitive information that could be shared with third parties, such as US law enforcement authorities.

This proposal, considered as a Big Brother type of initiative, has raised the opposition of the sceptics as well as supporters of EU being seen as a trap of a super-state as well as a threat to civil liberties respectively.

"The European Union is gaining criminal justice powers very rapidly. The problem is that one thing leads to another and that setting up centralised

French High Court cancels the creation of illegal migrants database

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:23:15 +0000

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In a decision published on 13 March, the Conseil d'État, the French highest administrative court, cancelled the ministerial order ("Arrêté") by which the Interior Ministry created the ELOI file, a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. On 2 October 2006, four French NGOs filed this case against the Interior minister: CIMADE and GISTI (two associations defending the rights of migrants), LDH (the French Human Rights League), and French EDRI member IRIS. While the database creation itself is allowed by the French code on immigration and asylum (CESEDA), the NGOs argued that the ELOI file would contain excessive and inadequate personal data on the foreigners themselves, their children, the citizens with

UK Home Office plans to fingerprint children starting 11

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:10:02 +0000

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"Restricted" documents circulated among officials in the UK Identity and Passport have shown Home Office plans to fingerprint children aged 11 years and over, beginning with 2010, as part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards.

The fingerprints are to be stored in a big database expected to cover about half a million children by 2011 that will be also used by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store fingerprints of asylum seekers.

The programme of introducing biometric elements on ID cards foresees that all citizens over 16 will be taken fingerprints, eye and facial details when applying for passports. Initially, children were supposed to be exempt from

Serbia rejects biometric ID cards

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:26:04 +0000

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A grass-roots campaign in Serbia successfully pressed the Serbian government to back off on a plan to make biometric data compulsory in the country's new ID cards. The decision followed a pitched battle prior to the 21 January 2007 election as opponents criticized the accompanying plan for a centralized database of citizen information and the taking of fingerprints.

The campaign against the Government plan practically started in December 2004, when the Dveri NGO organized a public debate at the College of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade. In March 2005, the Zhicha Bishoprie of the Serbian Orthodox Church organized a scientific forum, from which a number of IT professionals, university professors and intellectuals sent a

Changes in the UK ID card scheme

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 19:21:49 +0000

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The initial plan of the UK Government regarding the national ID scheme was meant to use photographs, fingerprints and iris scans in a National Identity Register. The Home Office's Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme considers now that the iris scans is just an option and only the ten fingerprints will be taken for each new applicant.

According to Home Office officials, the iris scan was dropped due to the high costs of this process. They also claimed the decision was also related "with international obligations, most international countries are using facial and fingerprint recognition so it is to come in line with that." However, a return to iris scanning in the future could still be possible.

FIPR report on children's databases - likely to harm rather than help

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:23:04 +0000

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The UK Information Commissioner has just published a report on the UK Government's plans to link up most of the public-sector databases that contain information on children. The report was written by experts from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), who conclude that aggregating this data will be both unsafe and illegal.

The report, 'Children's Databases: Safety and Privacy', analyses databases being built to collate information on children in education, youth justice, health, social work and elsewhere. Although linking the databases is supposed to safeguard children, the report's authors point out that extending Britain's child protection systems - from

UK biometric passports project set back by simple cloning possibilities

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:08:35 +0000

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UK Government faces now a big problem related to the introduction of the new biometric passports as recently it has been proven these passports can be easily and very cheaply copied by means of a microchip reader that can be legally bought on the Internet.

As a big embarrassment to the Home Office, a project having led to the increase of the travel documents by 60 per cent since March 2006, and that brought about 90 million euro costs for the passport production lines, may be entirely dropped as the new passports are more a risk for their owners rather than an improvement to the old documents.

"Three million people now have passports that expose them to a greater risk of identity fraud than before." said Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home

EU trying to push again biometrics on national ID cards

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:22:23 +0100

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According to a EU document presented by Statewatch in July 2006, The Visa Working Party on 13-14 June 2006 proposed another approach on the issue of the biometrics to be introduced on national ID cards.

The issue had met resistance back in February when several members of the European Council have expressed doubts especially as Belgium and the Czech Republic opposed to the measures proposed by EU, without a public debate.

In December 2005 the two governments gave a statement by which expressed their view that the introduction of biometrics into the ID national cards involved discussions of private life protection, financial and organizational issues, besides the technical aspect.

EU might fingerprint children even before 12 years old

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:18:19 +0100

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The report from the EU Council Presidency meeting of 26 June 2006 proposes that all children in the European Union should be mandatory fingerprinted if they are over 12 years old. "If provided for by national legislation" this action could be extended to all children, even below 12 years of age.

The Council is putting under discussion fingerprints as compulsory for EU passports in order to prevent passport fraud. The decision will be taken in a secret meeting of a committee made of representatives of the 25 governments and chaired by the European Commission.

The text proposed by the EU Council says that a member state can establish the age limit as low as they want and after 12, this process is mandatory.

UK ID card scheme heading to failure

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:37:56 +0100

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Reports by The Sunday Times newspaper revealed an apparent failure of the UK plans for ID cards resulting from an exchange of emails between David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, and Peter Smith, the acting commercial director of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS).

The email sent in June by David Foord suggested ministers would be forced to rethink the plans in order to meet the deadlines of introducing the cards by 2008. Peter Smith replied that his staff were prepared for the possibility that ministers would drop the ID card plan altogether. He also said the Home Office was making sure bigger contracts for projects linked to the ID card