EU court declares storing fingerprints in database illegal

Back in 2011 we told you about a woman who refused to be fingerprinted to get a new Dutch passport. Although she finally got one, she definitely made her point of not wanting to let the government store her fingerprints in a database that could be used for other purposes.

The European high court has declared that using fingerprints in a passport is fine, but storing them in a centralised or decentralised database is illegal, as it does not serve the purpose of the passport. Furthermore, there is ‘no legal basis’ for storing the fingerprints, as they could be used for other purposes. Pursuant to Article 4b of the Dutch passport law, the government stores passport fingerprints in a central database, which the Ministry of Justice eventually intended to use to track down criminals, using them for other purposes.

I can imagine why the woman did not want to give away her privacy for free and the EU court agrees with her completely. There are a lot of cases pending and for now Big Brother is on the losing side.

(Links: webwereld.nl – vingerafdrukken, webwereld.nl-opslag)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 18th, 2013 at 11:05 am and is filed under Online, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: fingerprints, passports