(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

"Restricted" documents circulated among officials in the UK Identity and Passport have shown Home Office plans to fingerprint children aged 11 years and over, beginning with 2010, as part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards.

The fingerprints are to be stored in a big database expected to cover about half a million children by 2011 that will be also used by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store fingerprints of asylum seekers.

The programme of introducing biometric elements on ID cards foresees that all citizens over 16 will be taken fingerprints, eye and facial details when applying for passports. Initially, children were supposed to be exempt from

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

A grass-roots campaign in Serbia successfully pressed the Serbian government to back off on a plan to make biometric data compulsory in the country's new ID cards. The decision followed a pitched battle prior to the 21 January 2007 election as opponents criticized the accompanying plan for a centralized database of citizen information and the taking of fingerprints.

The campaign against the Government plan practically started in December 2004, when the Dveri NGO organized a public debate at the College of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade. In March 2005, the Zhicha Bishoprie of the Serbian Orthodox Church organized a scientific forum, from which a number of IT professionals, university professors and intellectuals sent a

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The initial plan of the UK Government regarding the national ID scheme was meant to use photographs, fingerprints and iris scans in a National Identity Register. The Home Office's Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme considers now that the iris scans is just an option and only the ten fingerprints will be taken for each new applicant.

According to Home Office officials, the iris scan was dropped due to the high costs of this process. They also claimed the decision was also related "with international obligations, most international countries are using facial and fingerprint recognition so it is to come in line with that." However, a return to iris scanning in the future could still be possible.

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The UK Information Commissioner has just published a report on the UK Government's plans to link up most of the public-sector databases that contain information on children. The report was written by experts from the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), who conclude that aggregating this data will be both unsafe and illegal.

The report, 'Children's Databases: Safety and Privacy', analyses databases being built to collate information on children in education, youth justice, health, social work and elsewhere. Although linking the databases is supposed to safeguard children, the report's authors point out that extending Britain's child protection systems - from

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

UK Government faces now a big problem related to the introduction of the new biometric passports as recently it has been proven these passports can be easily and very cheaply copied by means of a microchip reader that can be legally bought on the Internet.

As a big embarrassment to the Home Office, a project having led to the increase of the travel documents by 60 per cent since March 2006, and that brought about 90 million euro costs for the passport production lines, may be entirely dropped as the new passports are more a risk for their owners rather than an improvement to the old documents.

"Three million people now have passports that expose them to a greater risk of identity fraud than before." said Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

According to a EU document presented by Statewatch in July 2006, The Visa Working Party on 13-14 June 2006 proposed another approach on the issue of the biometrics to be introduced on national ID cards.

The issue had met resistance back in February when several members of the European Council have expressed doubts especially as Belgium and the Czech Republic opposed to the measures proposed by EU, without a public debate.

In December 2005 the two governments gave a statement by which expressed their view that the introduction of biometrics into the ID national cards involved discussions of private life protection, financial and organizational issues, besides the technical aspect.

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

The report from the EU Council Presidency meeting of 26 June 2006 proposes that all children in the European Union should be mandatory fingerprinted if they are over 12 years old. "If provided for by national legislation" this action could be extended to all children, even below 12 years of age.

The Council is putting under discussion fingerprints as compulsory for EU passports in order to prevent passport fraud. The decision will be taken in a secret meeting of a committee made of representatives of the 25 governments and chaired by the European Commission.

The text proposed by the EU Council says that a member state can establish the age limit as low as they want and after 12, this process is mandatory.

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

Reports by The Sunday Times newspaper revealed an apparent failure of the UK plans for ID cards resulting from an exchange of emails between David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, and Peter Smith, the acting commercial director of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS).

The email sent in June by David Foord suggested ministers would be forced to rethink the plans in order to meet the deadlines of introducing the cards by 2008. Peter Smith replied that his staff were prepared for the possibility that ministers would drop the ID card plan altogether. He also said the Home Office was making sure bigger contracts for projects linked to the ID card