Is your fingerprint correct in your new passport?

When receiving a new passport, Civil Affairs departments are instructed, according to an internal letter from the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, not to test the correctness of the fingerprints by default when issuing passports/ID cards´. Citizens, the state secretary had to admit in the Lower House, do retain the right to demand verification, but the necessary equipment for this appears to be lacking in many municipalities. (Text courtesy of Vrijbit.)

This was one of the revelations in EO's broadcast of "This was the day" on Radio 1 on Monday 22 March 2010 from 11:33 - 11:43.

On 22 March 2010, Radio 1's current affairs programme "This is the day" the question of whether the fingerprints in a newly issued passport sufficiently match those of the owner of that passport. (As soon as it is possible, we will put the broadcast on this web page.)

Listen to the broadcast:

{mp3}check_fingerprint_in_passport{/mp3}

An initial report can be found here at the Privacy Barometer.

Mr Van Raak, Member of Parliament for the SP, used remarkable texts such as "using 19th century methods for 21st century problems" in the report. He will ask chamber questions on the issue.

We are glad that it turned out to be a very good report and hope that it has given a big boost to awareness about what is going on.

Privacy First, meanwhile, continues its civil lawsuit against The State in which we demand that the new passport law be abolished. That law puts all citizens with new passports at risk and is, in our view, evidence of irresponsible governance.