Privacy International on dangers of biometric passports [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        biometric passports
Date:   Tue, 30 Mar 2004 09:27:19 +0100
From:   Gus Hosein <gus () privacy org>
To:     declan



Hi Declan...

Here is a press release that we sent out last night regarding the 
development of biometric passports.  It is a form of multilateralism, that 
is growing.

Keep well...

gus.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/icaopressrelease.html

PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL
MEDIA RELEASE

Files & Biometric Identifiers on More Than a Billion Passengers to be 
Computerised and Shared Globally by 2015

Civil rights groups warn of grave dangers in International biometric 
passport system.

29th March 2004

Embargo: 22.00 hrs GMT, 29th March 2004

A wide range of privacy, human rights & civil liberties organisations 
throughout the world have signed an open letter expressing grave concerns 
over a global biometric identity system being established on behalf of 
governments by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The letter, spearheaded by Privacy International and the American Civil 
Liberties Union (ACLU) raises concerns about little-known plans to 
imminently create international standards that will require the use of 
biometrics and RFID (radio frequency) technology in all future passports. 
The measures, being decided this week at a meeting of the ICAO in Cairo, 
will result in a distributed international identification database on all 
passport holders.

The open letter has been signed by, among others, Statewatch, the UK based 
Foundation for Information Policy research, The Association for Progressive 
Communications and the US based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. The range of 
originating countries includes, among others, Australia, Canada, Germany, 
Korea, Nigeria and Swizterland.

The ICAO has agreed that the initial international biometric standard for 
passports will be facial mapping. Adequate memory space in newly issued 
passports will be reserved for additional biometrics such as fingerprinting 
at the discretion of every government. The EU is already calling for 
fingerprints to be included, along with an associated European register of 
all biometrics. National authorities will store and share these vast data 
reserves.

The measures, supported by the US and the EU, will ultimately create an 
electronic ID system on hundreds of millions of travellers. Despite serious 
implications for privacy and personal security, the process is occurring 
without public engagement or debate. Rather than allowing this important 
issue to be decided by parliaments, governments have delegated the setting 
of standards to the ICAO, a UN-level organization that is responsible for 
the standardization of travel documents, passenger data systems and air 
travel requirements.

The legislative drivers for the ICAO system are already in place. The 
USA-PATRIOT Act, passed by the U.S. Congress after the events of September 
2001 included the requirement that the President certify a biometric 
technology standard for use in identifying aliens seeking admission into 
the U.S., within two years. The schedule for its implementation was 
accelerated by another piece of legislation, the little known Enhanced 
Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act 2002. Part of this second law 
included seeking international co-operation with this standard:

"By October 26, 2004, in order for a country to remain eligible for 
participation in the visa waiver program its government must certify that 
it has a program to issue to its nationals machine-readable passports that 
are tamper-resistant and which incorporate biometric and authentication 
identifiers that satisfy the standards of the International Civil Aviation 
Organization (ICAO)."

These laws gave momentum to the standards that were being considered at the 
ICAO by requiring visa waiver countries (which include many EU countries, 
Australia, Brunei, Iceland, Japan, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, 
and Slovenia) to implement biometrics into their Machine-Readable Travel 
Documents (MRTDs), i.e. passports.

Based on projections from current passport and travel statistics, biometric 
details of more than a billion people will be electronically stored by 
2015. Some of the countries sampled for this estimate are:
United States   90 million
United Kingdom  54 million
Japan   64 million
Canada  24 million
Australia       13 million
Russian Federation      50 million
Ireland 4 million
Taiwan  17 million
China   60 million

The Privacy International open letter warns:

"We are increasingly concerned that the biometric travel document 
initiative is part and parcel of a larger surveillance infrastructure 
monitoring the movement of individuals globally that includes 
Passenger-Name Record transfers, API systems and the creation of an 
intergovernmental network of interoperable electronic data systems to 
facilitate access to each country's law enforcement and intelligence 
information."

Privacy International has warned of "unprecedented" security threats that 
could arise from the plan because of potential access by terrorists and 
organised crime. Furthermore, the biometric standard being adopted is 
"fundamentally flawed" and will result in a substantial number of 
passengers being falsely identified as potential terrorists or wrongly 
accused of holding fraudulent passports.

Dr Gus Hosein, Senior Fellow with Privacy International, warned: "This is a 
potentially perilous plan. The ICAO must go back to the drawing board or 
hold itself responsible for creating the first truly global biometric 
database".

"Governments may claim that they are under an international obligation to 
create national databases of fingerprints and face scans but we will soon 
see nations with appalling human rights records generating massive 
databases, and then requiring our own fingerprints and face-scans as we 
travel."

He continued: "In January 2004 when the U.S. began fingerprinting and 
face-scanning foreign visitors and storing this data for over fifty years 
under the US-VISIT program, many countries responded with alarm. With the 
biometric passport, however, every country may have its own surveillance 
system, accumulating fingerprints and face-scans and keeping them for as 
long as they wish with no regard to privacy or civil liberties."

Notes to editors:

The open letter is available at

http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/icaoletter.pdf

and a background information package is available at

http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/icaobackground.html

Contact Information:

Simon Davies, Director
Privacy International, +44 (0)7958 466 552 email simon () privacy org

Gus Hosein, Senior Fellow
Privacy International, +44 (0)20 7955 6403 email gus () privacy org

Passport statistics and projections have been derived from the following 
sources:

    * United States: http://travel.state.gov/passport_statistics.html
    * United Kingdom: http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/images/UKPS_plans_03-08.pdf
    * Japan: 
http://www2.tjnet.co.jp/intl/news/000214-28/specialreport1.html#anchor672995
    * Canada: http://www.ppt.gc.ca/faq/index_e.asp#150
    * Australia: http://www.dfat.gov.au/dept/annual_reports/99_00/2/2/2.1.html
    * Russian Federation: 
http://www.gks.ru/scripts/free/1c.exe?XXXX68F.4.1/010120R
    * Ireland: 
http://www.politics.ie/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2757
    * Taiwan: 
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:GSkSd0uIgOkJ:www.chinatopnews.com/Politics/Tue_Apr_18_11_47_33_2000.html+taiwan+%22passports+issued%22+lost+stolen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
    * China: 
http://www.chinaonline.com/industry/tourism/NewsArchive/cs-protected/2001/February/c01020555.asp

Privacy International (PI) www.privacyinternational.org is a human rights 
group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and 
corporations. PI is based in London, and has an office in Washington, D.C. 
Together with members in 40 countries, PI has conducted campaigns 
throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national 
security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police 
information systems, and medical privacy, and works with a wide range of 
parliamentary and inter-governmental organisations such as the European 
Parliament, the House of Lords and UNESCO.


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