Global Biometric ID Scheme Under Discussion
Pastor Dale Morgan
Global Biometric ID Scheme Under Discussion*
Added: Oct 27th, 2006 7:49 AM
US, EU sketch plans for global immigration database
By Mark Ballard
The US is to corral "like-minded" nations behind a global immigration
database after proving with a trial link to British computers that such
an ambitious, global plan is technically feasible.
Allies of the US have joined it in talks to formulate an international
policy framework that would allow the sharing of immigration databases,
effectively creating a global border control.
Their aim is to stop criminals and other undesirable migrants at a vast,
biometric border that is likely to include, at the very least, the EU
countries, Australia, and Canada.
Troy Potter, biometrics programme manager for the US Department of
Homeland Security's biometric border control programme, told The
Register only those countries "of like mind" would be allowed to join
the scheme: "People with similar goals, aspirations, laws and ability to
implement such a scheme.
"It's about keeping out folks from countries, to have more of a global
border per se," he said. "Shouldn't like-minded countries be told when
someone's been kept out of the US? That's a necessary next step
[because] immigration has become a worldwide issue."
Frank Paul, head of large scale IT systems at the European Commission,
hinted to an audience at the Biometrics 2006 conference last week about
EU support for such a scheme.
"We trust everyone enrolled in the US and they trust everyone in the EU
system. Then I don't see why the systems shouldn't be linked in the
future," he said.
Terrorists would be the prime target of the system. Terrorism had been
the reason the US government gave for setting up US-VISIT, the
immigration database for which Potter is biometric manager. The US
database had yet to snare a terrorist, and the Department of Homeland
Security has since been advertising it as a means of keeping foreign
murderers out of the country.
An international agreement for sharing immigration data would also
target criminals and "habitual immigration violators", Potter said.
"If there's a murderer in another country we would rather not have that
murderer in the US, especially if they are on the run," he said.
But he stressed the system would not finger normal people, or "Joe
Public". People's privacy would have to be respected, he said.
"We would violate the privacy laws of individual countries if we shared
data as we wanted to," said Potter, but added: "The last thing we want
is for someone who has changed their ways and then we keep harassing them."
It could take years for the US and its allies to form an agreement that
deals with all the emerging privacy and legal concerns about sharing
immigration data. Other developments at the Department for Homeland
Security could complicate matters further. It is developing a permanent
link between immigration and criminal databases, while US law enforcers
also want links to civil databases so they can get a full biographical
history of people who catch their interest.
"There are fine lines and that's where these agreements are not going to
be easy. But this is not routine data sharing on everyone. This is not
big brother," said Potter.
Similar concerns have slowed the progress of the European Visa
Immigration System (VIS). A continent-wide version of the US plan,
legislation to allow the VIS is stuck between the European Parliament
and member states in the Council of Ministers.
The concern is that European efforts to share information for
immigration are being subsumed into a broader security effort that has
no legal obligation to Europe's proud data protection authorities. This
has created tension between member states and the European Parliament
over other controversial data sharing arrangements - the US trawling of
passenger name records and secret snooping on banking data handled by
SWIFT being two recent examples. In neither case is the EU's authority
to impose data protection laws that would protect citizens from being
caught up in the zealous hunt for terrorists being conducted by the
security agencies.
The European VIS is being built by European Commission civil servants
anyway, and will be completed in 2007. There will simply not be any
legal basis for the system to be switched on.
The US faces the same problem, said Potter: "The policy and legal
framework is not in place to do routine data sharing between countries.
but that's something we were discussing."
The UK's Home Office and US Department of Homeland Security have already
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/03/us_uk_dbsharing/) trialled a
link between their immigration databases, which Potter said was successful.
"It was a technical trial. It showed we could share data between
countries if agreements were there so we could do it," he said. "Our
biometrics were compatible...when the legal and policy framework catches
up, we can do it."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/25/global_immigration_db/print.html