Citizen Affairs & Law, 2 July 2012: 'On 'child passports' and fingerprints'

"(...) Civil Affairs has 'weathered the storms' in the busiest weeks. And to think that it could all have been arranged a bit more smoothly at the counters if you had not had to take fingerprints. Because not only Privacy First, but also the Lower House, meanwhile, is convinced that 'the fingerprint biometric passport was a completely disproportionate measure that should never have been introduced'.

Out by Privacy First just Annual Statistical Surveys Document Fraud requested from the KMar, shows that in the years 2008 to 2011, only 46, 33, 21 and 19 cases of look-alike fraud with Dutch passports and identity cards have been on Dutch territory. And of course, from the nature of look-alike fraud, this will be the tip of an ice floe, but to take the fingerprints of 17 million Dutch people for that...

The Lower House decided in an AO on 15 May last that fingerprints would no longer need to be recorded on the [Dutch Identity Card, NIK]. Then, strictly speaking, the NIK is no longer a travel document under EU rules, but it can be used to travel within the EU.

How symbolic... on 26 June 2012, the House of Representatives is likely to agree to a motion by PvdA and D66 to accommodate conscientious objectors in advance of the new ID cards that cannot be issued without fingerprints until the end of 2013. There is also a motion (also supported by CDA, VVD and SP), which calls on the minister to raise the issue of usefulness and necessity at the European level due to the fact "that the supposed effectiveness of the requirement to record and store fingerprints is in question".

Things can get strange in and with politics: first, Dutch officials ensure that Dutch and European politicians consider fingerprints indispensable, and now the Netherlands is again leading the way in abolishing them. This is called progressive insight and has only cost tens of millions."

Source: Citizen Affairs & Law (trade journal Dutch Association for Civil Affairs) June-July 2012, p. 4. The entire article can be accessed HERE read.