B&R, Dec 23, 2010: "From the fingerprint front"

Brief news from the identity management and fingerprinting front 

"The management of identity documents such as travel documents (and driving licences?) is once again in the spotlight: is it now being done optimally, do fingerprints help combat identity fraud, and should fingerprints and other personal characteristics/data be stored centrally in online records and... who has access to them?
(…)
Meanwhile, the Privacy First Foundation has filed a case against the State of the Netherlands over the introduction of fingerprints in Dutch travel documents. [26 January 2011], the District Court of The Hague handed down its judgment. At issue in the courtroom was the WRR's Web publication, Biometric passport in the Netherlands, crash or soft landing, also play a role. It is after the Web publication discussed in the previous B&R Happy landings? the biometric passport as black box, the second partial report to serve as a prelude to a proper WRR report entitled iGovernment (to be published this spring 2011). See wrr.co.uk. Due to circumstances, no comprehensive review in your trade journal this time. Take heart! And then on 10 December last (the 62nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) in Amsterdam, the Foundation for the Protection of Civil Rights also presented itself (go to platformburgerrechten.nl). Sharp texts such as "Dutch citizens are nowadays treated as if they are suspects or criminals" and "it seems that the government is increasingly hiding behind arguments like state security and erecting Kafkaesque barriers to deprive citizens of insight into what happens behind the scenes with their data or which agency makes decisions". 2011 will be the year of the come back of privacy and ORRA finds its Waterloo! Bet?"

Source: Civil Affairs & Law No 12 (2010), p. 406, written by editor-in-chief Alfred Zebregs.

Comment by Privacy First: B&R is the trade journal of the Dutch Association for Civil Affairs (NVVB), or for all Dutch municipalities. The term ORRA is official jargon for 'Online Consultable Travel Document Administration': the planned national database for storing fingerprints.