Biometric Passports Agreed To In EU

An anonymous reader writes "The European Parliament has signed up to a plan to introduce computerized biometric passports including people's fingerprints as well as their photographs, despite criticism from civil liberties groups and security experts who argue that the move is flawed on technical grounds. (Back in 2005 Sweden and Norway began deploying biometric passports.)"

Comments

dumb sheep

[Swiper]

Oh great, Just because the US has them, we have to get them as well, despite the very vocal criticism there has been....what a bunch of blind and deaf sheep we have as eurocrats!

Re:dumb sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, there are European Parliament elections this summer! This time make sure you go to vote the MEP that will truly represent you and your views. Democracy just don't happens. Oil just don't come out from the pump. Your e-mail just does not sit in the "cloud". People make things happen. Democracy functions as long as people vote. We've seen democracy failing too many times (e.g. 1933 in Deutschland). So get involved, is so simple!

Re:dumb sheep

[Hurricane78]

Yeah, as if choosing one of a set of crooks would actually solve anything...

What we need is a good old revolution. And I mean one with a new form of government following it.

I propose metagovernment.org, for lack of a better form of it (for lack of having time to create one myself. :( ).

Re:dumb sheep

[irae]

I wish I lived in Belgium since they don't have a government there.

As my Belgian friend said, Belgium is the best example that a government isn't necessary.

Re:dumb sheep

[Xest]

"The EU is the largest assembly of corrupt and indadequate politicians you will ever find."

I disagree, this past couple of years they've done a better job of protecting civil liberties than British parliament has for it's own citizens, that's not saying much but I'd say from this that they're at least better than Britain's Labour government.

Re:dumb sheep

[Znork]

There is some hope in me yet that there will be at least one MP who isn't like that

Well, for the parliament there are usually many options you can vote for that aren't in among the worst.

the constant interference of what basically are foreign powers in our national politics

A lot of the time it's basically our national politicians using a scapegoat. The commission and council are our own/largely loyal to our own politicians, and they love to shove things through in the EU and then say 'it's the EU!', even if they were the ones proposing it in the first place.

The problem isn't inherent in the involvement of other EU countries and politics, the problem is the lack of accountability and the way it gets used for denial of responsibility.

Re:dumb sheep

[VShael]

This time make sure you go to vote the MEP that will truly represent you and your views.

Wow! Is there an Oscar, or a Nobel Prize for naivety? If so, you have my vote.

The Commission of the EU is unelected. They were all found guilty of corruption a few years ago, and collectively stood down. Only to stand right back up again. Corruption pervades the EU Parliament. It was designed to make sure it could not hold the (even more) corrupt EU Commission to account.

And good luck finding ANY MEP that represents your view if you're a Euro-sceptic. They don't exist.

Even in a multi-party system, you will still get situations where every elected official speaks in unison, and the "Opposition" is an opposition in name only. It happens all the time, whether in the run up to the Iraq war in England (when the Conservatives couldn't wait to kiss Tony Blair's arse) or in the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland (where all the parties said to vote Yes, except for sinn fein, the terr^H^H^H^H ex-terrorist party.)

The only solution is to stand for office yourself, and again, the system is designed in such a way that that can't happen unless you're wealthy. (Not just rich, but wealthy.) And as Declan Ganley of the newly founded Libertas party is finding out, even then, the establishment does it's best to ridicule you, destroy you, and keep you out of their little game.

All your fingerprints

[Anonymous Coward]

are belong to US, I mean EU.

Disabled people = 2nd class citizens

[gavanm]

People with no hands would obviously be exempt from the new fingerprint-based biometric passport system. Instead, they would have to apply for temporary, 12- month passports in order to travel, the MEPs agreed.

I can see this being popular with advocacy groups....

Especially when many non-EU countries are reluctant to welcome people with less than 6 months left on their passports. In effect many will have to apply for a temporary passport every 6 months.

Stupidity at its best. If the passport biometrics indicate they have no hands, the it should be very easy to verify this.

Either that or ask people for toe prints, or nose prints or stump prints.

Re:Disabled people = 2nd class citizens

[4D6963]

Either that or ask people for toe prints, or nose prints or stump prints.

Or better yet, face prints, also known by insiders as "photographs". Presents the advantage of being easily identifiable by anyone.

Re:Disabled people = 2nd class citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

except the blind!

As our American friends say, "good luck with that"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I can't see this one going very far. Several of the most influential EU nations have general elections coming up within a year or two, centralised European power is already under the spotlight because of the way the Constitution^WReform Treaty was handled by diktat, and governments already lost at sea over the economic mess won't want to rock the boat any further.

In the UK, in particular, I suspect the NO2ID anti-ID card campaign will pick this up in about ten seconds. At that point, it will become associated with the National Identity Register and National ID Card biometrics programmes, and become a political suicide pill.

With a bit of luck, it'll finally bring down the catastrophe that is centrally dictated European policy, make us aware that we don't have to jump just because some guy at 1600 said so, and restore a little of the democracy we've had stolen from us in recent years along the way.

Political?

[youknowjack]

This is almost certainly a political move; with terrorism being a scarier topic than privacy

Nevertheless, the summary doesn't do justice to the article. The article suggests that experts agree the passports will be much harder to forge (impossible with current methods) - which is a big strength.

In fact, the main argument against using biotech passports (in the article) is that authorities will begin to rely on them 'too much', which doesn't ring true to me, since biotech is inherently MORE reliable than, say, an official trying to identify someone by a small passport photo.

I think the risk of misappropriation of bio-information is worth it, weighed up against the risk of terrorist or criminal activities which it seeks to mitigate.

Re:Political?

[RAMMS EIN]

``I think the risk of misappropriation of bio-information is worth it, weighed up against the risk of terrorist or criminal activities which it seeks to mitigate.''

Now this is how we should look at it. In most discussions, all I ever hear is "X is bad, because of Y" or "X is good, because of Z". Usually, both sides are right. But that's not what we want to know. We want to know, considering all the benefits and all the drawbacks, if we'd be better of with or without X.

With the current generation of passports issued in the Netherlands, I am down on the "X is bad" side. This is because the government haven't done their homework (or they have and are trying to mislead us all). The chip that's on them allows anybody who wants to to read the information on it, and this can be done from a few meters away without us knowing about it, let alone consenting to it. Government publications say this is not the case, which I take to mean "that's not how we intended it". That's why I say, even if you are in favor of the government collecting the data that is on those chips, you should still be against the current generation of chips.

Given that the government is lying about these chips, I think much closer scrutiny is warranted. What do they _really_ want to achieve, and what is _really_ being achieved? Also, I want my money back, because all of my money that has gone into implementing the current system has gone into a system that is, at best, dangerously flawed, and at worst intentionally dangerous. Both of which aren't something I want to pay for, nor even get for free.

Underneath all this, however, is the important question of "suppose the system were implemented the government would have you believe it is, would it then be a Good Thing?" It will never be perfectly secure, but it can be a lot better than it is now. And I am convinced we can do better checking of people against passports with additional data stored on the passport than without it. My question is: how cost effective is it all? How much would it cost to implement a decent biometric identification system, and how much would that save us?

Problems

[tdwMighty]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._passport#Biometric_passport

According to privacy advocates, the BAC and the shielded cover are ineffective when a passport is open, and that a passport may have to be opened for inspection in a public place such as a hotel, a bank, or an Internet cafe. An open passport is subject to illicit reading of chip data, such as by a government agent who is tracking a passport holder's movements or by a criminal who is intending identity theft.

If this is true, then wont this just hurt the honest people and do nothing to stop "criminals"?

A necessity

[Lavene]

I think this is good since it helps stopping terrorists and pedophiles. Terrorists and pedophiles are constantly crossing the borders to terrorize us and molest our children. Terrorists and pedophiles. Terrorists and pedophiles.

By giving up my privacy I help catch the terrorists and pedophiles. By registering my fingerprints and DNA I help catch the terrorists and pedophiles.

The terrorists and pedophiles are everywhere. They must be stopped and in order to do so I must let the government read my e-mail, follow my web browsing, track my phone calls. It's the only way to stop the terrorists and pedophiles.

By protesting you support the terrorists and pedophiles you damn pedophile terrorist. If you're not with your government you're with the terrorists and pedophiles.

Terrorists! Pedophiles! Everywhere!!

Must... give... fingerprint... to... stop... terrorists and pedophiles.

Re:A necessity

[Thanshin]

That's what a terrorists would say to deflect suspicion. Or a pedophile.

And the Swiss will vote in May

[dago]

as the parlament changed the law to introduce biometric passports, a group of citizens sucessfully launched a referendum.
As a result, they're going to vote on this in May, so this will be a good indicator as the people will directy decided.

And before other people jump on the democracy aspect and representation in the EU, don't forget that many EU government/parlament (including mine) already introducted biometric passports and are directly elected.

It will be also difficult to guess what the swiss result will be as they already 'confirmed' different EU decision in such referendums.

Re:As our American friends say, "good luck with th

[drsmithy]

It's ridiculously expensive, impossible to enforce and hugely unpopular, so whats in it for them??

Hugely unpopular ? ID cards only seem to be 'hugely unpopular' amongst a vocal minority, everyone else tends to fall into either the 'they will help us catch bad people' or, at most, the 'I've done nothing wrong, so I've got nothing to hide' camps.