Report - Guardian

The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005 51for these passports, including potential conflict between the goals of centralisingcitizens’ biometrics and protecting privacy laws, and collision with ‘cultural practices’.According to ICAO documents, States should have regard to the followingconsideration:“At States own borders, for passports issued to their own citizens,whether to extract the biometric from the traveller’s passport, or froma database containing the biometric template assigned to that travellerwhen their passport was issued (note some States are legislativelyinhibited from storing biometric templates and in this case have nochoice other than to use the image or template stored in the traveldocument).”The ICAO thus states:“ideally, the biometric template or templates should be stored on thetravel document along with the image, so that travellers’ identities canbe verified in locations where access to the central database isunavailable or for jurisdictions where permanent centralized storage ofbiometric data is unacceptable.” 82The ICAO goes on to confirm that while central databases can facilitate additionalsecurity confirmation checks, they are not necessary. In response, the EuropeanCommission admitted that this issue required further attention and research to:“examine the impact of the establishment of such a European Registeron the fundamental rights of European citizens, and in particular theirright to data protection.” 83In response to the ICAO’s statement, an open letter issued to the ICAO by civil societyorganisations from the around the world observed:“It may be interesting to see if national governments recall this option,or if they rather change their national laws to allow for centralizedstorage, as allowed in other ICAO documents. Creative compliancemay be a tool of both the state and non-state actors.” 84The call by Governments for national biometric databases, the creation of databases onforeign travellers, and the development of biometrics beyond a digital photograph arenot in accordance with international obligations.82 ICAO, Biometrics Deployment of Machine Readable Travel Documents: Technical Report, ICAO TAGMRTD/NTWG, May 21, 2004.83 Commission of the European Communities, Proposal for a Council Regulation on Standards for Security Featuresand Biometrics in EE Citizens' Passports, Brussels, The European Commission, 2004,http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st06/st06406-re01.en04.pdf.84 Privacy International and others, An Open Letter to the ICAO, March 30, 2004,http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-43421.