Luxembourg floats exemption on biometrics

By David Cronin

Date: 30/06/05

LUXEMBOURG'S EU presidency has urged that a possible exemption from having fingerprints stored on the passports of children should be considered.

After the 11 March train bombings in Madrid last year, the Union's governments agreed that including biometric indicators like fingerprints or facial scans in travel documents would be a useful tool in fighting terrorism. But an internal Council of Ministers paper drawn up recently by the government of Luxembourg queries whether this should apply to minors.

It cites a study by the Dutch government, concluding that it is difficult to capture biometric indicators - a measure of identity based on a body part or behavioural trait of an individual - from small children. As a result, Luxembourg suggests that "it would be suitable to conduct a reflection" on those below a certain age from the requirement to have biometric passports.

Luxembourg does not recommend, however, any particular age threshold. Yet it does also suggest there should be a discussion about exempting other categories from the biometrics requirement - such as diplomats, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Exemptions could potentially cause difficulties with the US authorities, which had sought to make it mandatory for European and other countries belonging to the 27-nation visa-waiver programme to include biometric indicators in their passports by this October. Earlier this month, the Americans agreed to extend that deadline by a year. Yet they have not relaxed their requirement that child travellers will have to have separate passports from their parents.

Gus Hosein of the civil liberties watchdog Privacy International said there were several studies which indicated that biometric technology was "lousy". For example, the UK passport service published results of a survey in May, in which it checked biometric indicators of 10,000 individuals against a database with one million fingerprints. Its verification rate for fingerprints was 80%, with the study concluding that devices used to take prints often do not record enough detail from fingers.

According to Hosein, there could be immense delays at passport offices and immigration checks if 20% of travellers could not have their biometric indicators verified.

But Daniel Keohane from the Centre for European Reform in London said that biometrics could prove important in fighting terrorism, especially given how criminals have resorted to passport and credit card fraud.

"Biometrics are not a panacea," he added. "But if you talk to governments and people who work in security, they feel that, technological problems aside, they are the best way forward. Certainly, border people think that they will make it easier to compile databases of suspected terrorists."

Article reports that the outgoing Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union suggested to exempt children from the introduction of fingerprints or other biometric data to EU passports.