By Steve Ranger, 13 April 2005 13:10
NEWS The government has denied claims that it is pushing forward its ID card scheme with plans to start fingerprinting passport applicants next year.
According to a report in The Guardian, from next year new adult passport applicants - of which there are around 600,000 a year - will have to attend an interview at a passport office, where they will be fingerprinted.
The newspaper claimed the police will be given the power to carry out checks against the national fingerprint database that will be created.
Mandatory fingerprinting would be a handy building block for the ID card scheme proposed by the government, but shelved in the run up to the election.
But the Home Office told silicon.com that no "formal decision whether to go ahead and include a second biometric" in the new 'ePassport' has been made.
In its business plan, published last month, the UK Passport Service said that fingerprint scans are likely to be incorporated into the passport chip later in the decade.
But the Home Office insists no date has been set for this, or for any other potential additional biometrics such as iris scans.
It said that by the end of this year, new passports will have a digital image of the passport photo stored on a chip.
And it said that the end of next year, first-time applicants will have to attend an interview - currently 90 per cent of applications are by post.
Only in later years will these interviews be used to take a second biometric, the Home Office added.
Comments
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1. Richard
Credible or Credulous?
In view of the many dodgy claims from this government, can we really trust this statement?
Regardless of any opposition, Ministers and the Home Office seem determined to foist ID cards on us; increasing their intrusions into our lives, privacy and freedoms.
Their wild unsupported claims and “justifications” may change, but their long term authoritarian policy seems fixed.
2. anonymous
I don't see what is intrusive about a fingerprint. Surely its better to feel protected against terrorism?
3. Al Anderson
Do you really think a fingerprint on a passport will protect you against terrorism? This is just one of the fears that the govt and the powers that be play on in order to justify their ultimate end: total and complete surveillance of the population. Compulsory ID cards are just one small step along that path. Terrorism will not suddenly stop after the introduction of ID cards.
4. James Button
They don't need your fingerprints on the passport...
You'll be fingerprinted as you enter the country (well the USA at least), and that fingerprint set will be checked against the government held database of fingerprints.
That database will link to the police, courts, security services, and ... the health service, driving licence, passport records offices, and any other records that the government bodies want to use.
All that will be a security matter so freedom of information, and data protection acts will be totally bypassed and those in the 'know' will be, or are already 'forbidden' to tell you, or assist you to find out what links are being used, and what information is held in those 'security' organisations databases.
And - if you get 'arrested', or just taken into custody then your DNA will be taken as part of the initial documentation procedures so that will be available to the 'security' services as well.
I believe the 'ID cards' hype is purely to make the general public thing that the checks do not currently exist, and when they do, that they will all be open and access will be under parliamentary scrutiny.
Any member of an 'official' regulatory or administration control body care to put their name to a refutation my assertions?