The European Union is on track to begin including
biometric identifiers in the passports issued by its member nations
.
By 2008 the biometric data is also expected to include
fingerprints, although EU officials are debating whether
fingerprint data should be made obligatory.
The European Parliament has approved a report issued by the
European Commission which calls for the regulation of standards for
security features and biometrics in EU passports.
The Coelho report is the basis for the regulation, which seeks
to make the use of a facial image in passports obligatory.
It allows the member states to choose whether or not to
introduce biometric fingerprints.
The report was adopted after 471 MEPs voted for it, according to
Danny De Paepe, spokesman for the European Parliament's Civil
Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee on Commission
proposals. Only 118 MEPs voted against and six abstained.
The Council of Ministers, though, is trying to make fingerprints
in passports obligatory.
The legislation is expected to reach an EU committee in January,
where members will have about two months to hammer out the details
of its implementation.
Once the committee completes its work, member states will be
given 18 months before they must begin using facial images in
passports, and 36 months until biometric fingerprints come into
play.
Member states will be able to use a digitised version of a
facial image or a biometric facial scan consisting of 1,840 plot
points on a person's face. That technology is more expensive and
labour-intensive to obtain, but contains more information.
Because it is a regulation, and not a directive, the law would
not affect the UK and Ireland, although the UK government has
already decided to require biometric facial identifiers in
passports issued from in 2005.
One of the major drivers of the regulation is the US biometric
authentication requirement in its Enhanced Border Security and Visa
Entry Reform Act of 2002.
This requires the 27 nations currently participating in the US
Visa Waiver Program to issue new passports with biometric features
that support facial recognition by October 2005.
The UK government expects the US to push back the 2005 deadline
as additional time is needed, in part, to make sure data protection
requirements are considered.
"The US government has been pressing hard on this, although it
has no intention of requiring biometrics in the passports of its
own citizens," said Tony Bunyan, of UK-based European civil
liberties group Statewatch.
De Paepe agreed that while pressure from the US was a factor,
the primary reason behind the regulation is concern for the
security of citizens living in the EU member states.
The European Commission already produced draft regulations to
introduce, by 2005, biometric data on visas and resident permits
for non-EU nationals.
That information would be stored on national and EU databases
that will be accessible through the Visa Information System held
on the Schengen Information System.
The European Parliament is opposed to establishing a central
database of EU passports and travel documents containing all EU
passport holders' biometric and other data.
Laura Rohde writes for IDG News Service