5 EU ministers back digital passports
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FLORENCE Interior ministers from the five largest West European countries have agreed to adopt digital fingerprinting on passports, officials here said, but a second day of talks on Monday found them still deadlocked on a plan to create migrant holding
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The five Europeans who were freed after being kidnapped in Ethiopia are due to fly back to the UK.
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(InfoWorld) - Germany will store digital fingerprints in addition to digital photos in passports as one of several biometric security measures planned toÂ fight organized crime and international terrorism. All new passports issued from November will store two digital fingerprints in an embedded chip, which, since 2005, includes a digital photo, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior said Friday. While fingerprints will be stored exclusively in passport chips, photos will continue to be saved additionally in databases of local authorities. A new amendment gives police and other authorized government officials online access to these databases. Unlike several other countries in Europe and abroad, Germany has no central database for photos or fingerprints of all citizens or for registered foreigners living in the country, and currently lacks plans to establish one, according to a ministry spokeswoman. Centralized data, including photos and fingerprints, exists only for people registered with the police for criminal activity, and for applicants for German visas. Only readers equipped with a new cryptographic protocol can read the passports including both photos and fingerprints. The Extended Access Control system connects the chip and the reader by establishing a secure communications channel over a distance of 10 centimeters to 20 centimeters. Moves by the German government to digitize increased levels of personal data and link databases among authorities have led to an outcry by some groups, including federal and state data privacy commissioners. At a meeting in DÃ¼sseldorf on Friday, the commissioners criticized the government's programs that amass personal data, including telephone records, and its plans to give greater power to police officials to monitor terrorists and other criminals online by allowing them to hack into computers. In 2008, the German government plans new ID cards for all citizens with the same biometric features, according to the spokeswoman. "There are three primary reasons to issue biometric ID cards: to avoid false IDs, strengthen the identification process and also offer an authorization possibility for services such as online purchases," she said. By 2010, Germany hopes to have a new central database containing core data about each citizen and registered inhabitant of the country, according to the spokeswoman. The data includes name, birthday and address but will not contain a photo or fingerprints, she said. In February, the government passed a law allowing security officials in the country to create theÂ largest and most comprehensive pool of personal dataÂ ever amassed in the country. The databases of nearly 40 different agencies, including the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), are now being linked to allow authorities to run searches on suspected individuals and retrieve information within minutes. An expanded index file is being created for suspected terrorists. The file will contain the person's name, bank account number, telephone number, e-mail address, driver's license information and other data, including the names of companies, organizations and other parties associated with the person and linked to terrorist groups. Since the start of this week, law enforcement officials in Germany and Austria have electronic access to each other's criminal fingerprint databases. Since 2006, the countries have shared their DNA databases as one of several measures agreed by some European Union nations under the Treaty of PrÃ¼m in 2005. Â
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The move brings the European Union's total promises of support to 1.5bn once contributions from the 25 national governments are included.
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Investor's Business Daily - Austria's chancellor and Slovakia's prime minister sawed through a red and white border barrier in a symbolic extension of the EU's passport-free zone to former Eastern Bloc nations: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Support for the move is mixed, with the head of the EU's border watchdog agency warning that it will fuel illegal immigration.
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Iris, fingers, head, shoulders, knees and toes The UK, Europe and the US are planning to belt and brace their border databases by using multiple forms of biometrics to identify people.â¦
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BRUSSELS, Belgium - Residents of the European Union who want to take their cat, dog or ferret to another EU nation will need special pet passports starting Friday.    The wallet-sized passports will verify that the pet has been vaccinated against rabies...
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Starting in November, German passports will store digital fingerprints as one of several biometric security measures planned to fight organized crime and international terrorism.
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The European Commission has asked four more countries for information on how they buy computers. Rival AMD applauds the move.
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As passports equipped with RFID chips are adopted more widely around the world, successful attempts to crack them are on the rise as well. Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. have already reported compromised data, but countries such as New Zealand remain unconcerned about such threats. But what if the goal wasn't data theft but detonation?
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In a bid to improve security, ministers from five EU countries said today they hoped to start digital fingerprinting for passports in 2006, but they split over a German proposal to put illegal migrants in transit camps in North Africa.
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European Union governments are pushing through contentious new plans to retain data from telephone calls and e-mails for a minimum period of 12 months as part of new anti-terrorist and cybercrime proposals.
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The EU announces proposals for biometric fingerprinting of visitors from outside the European Union arriving at its borders.
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The United States plans to issue passports with personal data stored on radio frequency identification chips. The documents would be harder to forge, but might leave holders vulnerable to identity theft. By Ryan Singel.
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The UK government will store electronic records of people entering the UK in effort to tighten border control.
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Five European Union defence ministers have signed an agreement to launch a joint 3,000-strong gendarmerie force to be deployed to hotspots worldwide.
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The European Union's top security official yesterday lauded Google's decision to scale back how long it keeps personally identifiable data accumulated from its users as a step towards addressing privacy concerns.