Biometric finger scans take the lead

US security chiefs have backed fingerprinting as the “leading biometric” in a U-turn on high-tech ID for border checks.

International civil aviation standards agreed in the wake of September 11 urge all governments to improve the security of travel documents.

Proposals – backed by the US and EU – envisage the embedding of microchips containing digital data in passports, and deadlines have been set for 2006.

Under current plans the ‘lead’ biometric is to be digital photographs allowing facial recognition software to screen documents making a comparison to physical individuals.

But speaking in Brussels on Friday – ahead of an EU-US summit focused on anti-terrorism measures – America’s deputy homeland security chief Admiral James Loy signalled a re-think.

“We do believe that digital fingerscans are probably a much better leading biometric to deal with,” he told journalists.

“The principle reason is that if we are going to make a security impact quickly we should be grappling with a biometric… that literally has a database established well around the world already.”

“We would just like to specify fingerprints as a very practical, better biometric to use.”

Loy and US homeland security officials have recognised that “there are virtually are no facial databases” but fingerprint records are used by law enforcement agencies all over the world.

Existing terror watch lists and wanted criminal databases, held by Interpol and others, could speed up the effectiveness of biometrics by offering as immediate tie-in with the new technology.

But, officials stress, databases would only include wanted lists for extraditable serious crime.

American officials also note that there have been technical problems with the high quality of digital image required for facial recognition software to work.

EU civil liberties campaigners Statewatch describe the latest development as a “total mess”.

A series of G8 justice summits, civil aviation organisations and EU-US working groups backed facial recognition biometrics despite warnings over the new technology, claim the group.

“This is a complete U-turn and complete farce. The EU is also in a real mess. A political debacle,” Statewatch editor Tony Bunyan told EUpolitix.com.

Bunyan also fears that the shift to tried-and-tested finger print technology will enable the US and EU to more easily push through controversial measures.

“It is true that fingerprints are much quicker to introduce. And if biometrics are imposed more quickly the civil liberty aspects become more urgent,” he said.

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