On 25 October 2004 Members of the Europarliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted on a proposal from the Council of Ministers to include a biometric identifier in EU passports and visas of travellers with EU destinations. While the MEPs were discussing the technical implications and privacy guarantees, behind their back the Council replaced the proposal by a more extreme proposal to include 2 biometric identifiers, instead of just one.

According to the new Council proposal, member states have to include digitalised fingerprints and a face scan on the RFID chip embedded in the travel documents. Face scans will have to be included in travel documents 18 months after the Council regulations enter into force (Germany will already start issuing biometric passports at the end of 2005), fingerprints will follow 18 months later.

The European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) will vote today in Strasbourg on two important reports on the introduction of biometric identifiers in EU travel documents. Both reports - on "Visas, residence permits: uniform format, photo, biometric identification" and on "Biometrics in EU citizens' passports" are shepherded by MEP Carlos Coelho, a member of the Conservative Group from Portugal.

But even while the Parliament is preparing to vote on the report, the European Council is dealing with a proposal that would make the Parliament's vote void, requiring all Member States to take fingerprints off all of their citizens applying for EU travel documents. The European Union's Justice and Home Affairs Ministers, who are meeting today in Luxembourg, are even discussing an extremist proposal from Britain and Germany to introduce iris scans as a third identifier that Member States may introduce if they chose to do so.

The RFID workshop organised during the FIfF anniversary conference (Berlin, 30 September - 3 October 2004) offered an excellent overview of the technical issues and privacy questions. Robert Gehring introduced the history of RFID, and explained passive chips were first used in World War II air-planes to detect the proximity of enemy planes. The chips were only adopted on a large scale in Europe in 1980s, as huge ear-labels on cows.

In 1999 the Auto-ID center was founded at the US MIT lab. The Center's research was focussed on robots, how they could move in a room with unknown objects. In stead of working on image recognition for the robot, the scientists decided to equip all the furniture with RFIDs and put the intelligence in the objects. After years of large financial support by the industry, on 31 October 2003 the Auto-ID Center closed down. Now several Auto-ID labs are collaborating with EPCglobal to create new standards for data storage and data retrieval.

EU COMMISSION WANTS TO RFID EVERYTHING

The European Commission considers it to be part of the Lisbon Strategy - and therefore a top priority - 'to have smart dust and tag everything' with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The point was made by Rosalie Zobel, Director of the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme at the Commission, in her opening speech of a one-day workshop on 'wireless tags research needs' in Brussels on 20 April 2004. Mrs Zobel thinks this aim can be achieved and dreams of it being "the source of a new set of business models and creator of high quality tech jobs".

The workshop was part of a consultation process in relation to Work Programme 2005-06, which covers the second half of the EU's Sixth Research Framework Programme (FP6). The Work Programme will be officially published at the end of October, and is likely to contain three calls for projects that may be funded by the EU in the field of RFID technology with a total of 180 Million Euro.

According to a new Communication on the research into security, the European Commission plans to fund research on "tagging, tracking and tracing devices ... that improve the capability to locate, identify and follow the movement of mobile assets, goods and persons".

The Commission announces the launch of a new funding program entitled 'Enhancement of the European industrial potential in the field of Security research 2004 - 2006'.

The program is a so-called 'Preparatory Action'. It should set the agenda for advanced security research from 2007 onwards. The action is funded with 15 million Euro in 2004 and approx. 65 million Euro overall.

Among the goals of the research is the improvement of 'situation awareness'. Relevant issues for the different projects are identified as "(...) Demonstration of the appropriateness and acceptability of tagging, tracking and tracing devices by static and mobile multiple sensors that improve the capability to locate, identify and follow the movement of mobile assets, goods and persons, including smart documentation (e.g. biometrics, automatic chips with positioning) and data analysis techniques (remote control and access)."

The European commercial interest in the development of spy-chips (RFIDs) is growing rapidly. Radio Frequency Identifiers are very small wireless chips that can be read without touching them.

Intel and Siemens have just announced they will open an 'RFID Technology Centre' in Germany in March, near Munich. The companies wish to present 'experience-able RFID-technology', to show the usability of the mini-chips in logistics, in supply-chain processes, and last but not least, in customer relationship management.

Earlier this month IBM and Philips also announced a partnership to develop and use RFID-tags. Within this collaboration, Philips will produce the chips, while IBM takes care of the computer-systems and services. They will start their collaboration in a Philips semiconductor factory in Taiwan, where they will put the spy-chips on cartons and packaging materials.

After a tour in the Future Store of the German Metro concern, privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht discovered spy-chips with unique numbers in the customer loyalty cards. She also found RFID tags on products sold in the store that were not completely de-activated after the purchase.

Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) was invited by the German civil liberty group Foebud to lecture about RFIDs and visit the Future Store, that was opened last year to test experimental RFID applications on live shoppers. "We were shocked to find RFID tags in Metro's 'Payback' loyalty card," said Albrecht. "The card application form, brochures, and signage at the store made no mention of the embedded technology and Metro executives spent several hours showing us the store without telling us about it."

The German civil rights and privacy-organisation FoeBuD is the winner of an idea-contest for a national awareness campaign about the infringement of civil liberties through new technologies. With the price of 15.000 Euro, FoeBuD wants to develop a 'Dataprivatizer', a tool to detect RFID's, minuscule spy-chips that are increasingly built into consumer goods.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) are tiny computer chips with an antenna that can be read without touching or even seeing it. These transponders can be built into every yoghurt cup or piece of clothing. The chips can secretly divulge information about the buyer. With these data firms can set up profiles about the shopping behaviour and leisure activities of their customers.

This is not a remote future.