A video from privacymatters.nl illustrates really well why this is a serious threat. People will say “I don’t have anything to hide”. But how would it feel to be tracked 24/7? How would it feel to know that the government can check up on what you say to your wife over the phone, or even worse, how would it feel if you were put in with a group of suspects for a criminal act, based on your fingerprints?

As the margin for comparison mistakes of fingerprints will be about 3%, there is a huge risk of getting involved with cases you initially had nothing to do with. Imagine a database with 16 million people. 3% of 16 million is still 480.000 wrongly suspected victims.

There are some exceptions however. If, for some reason, you cannot give fingerprints (medical conditions and such) you will be granted a proof of identification that will have to be renewed after 5 years. If the medical condition is only temporary, you will be granted a proof of identification that is valid for one year, after which it will have to be re-evaluated.

The government is not allowed to use the fingerprints in the database to look for a suspect. At least, not according to current law. In the law, however, there is a loophole that might allow the government to do this later. Which means the exact scenario I just outlined is actually possible.

Vrijbit, a Dutch organization that fights the disappearing of privacy, filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights about the storage of all fingerprints in a central database. Maybe the court will take action, but I’m very afraid that we don’t actually have any say in this.

The worst thing is that you have to renew your identification in time. Which means you have to give your fingerprints, and you can’t complain. Simply because walking around without a valid ID can get you in trouble. And given the current level of security of the Dutch government’s IT business, I don’t trust this at all. Besides being watched by the government 24/7 (your fingerprints are stored on a remotely readable RFID chip), criminals might get access to the database and use it against you.

Technological advancements aren’t always a good thing.

Watch the privacymatters.nl video here with English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAq9ExbZFQQ

Sources used for this article:
The article on the new law by Wilmer Heck and Annemarie Kas in nrc.next, Friday September 18, 2009
http://www.onzeprivacy.nl/
http://www.privacymatters.nl/
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:142:0001:0004:EN:PDF