Growing outrage over Dutch fingerprint database

Nov 25, 2009, 11:04 GMT

Amsterdam - More than 3,000 people in the Netherlands have signed a petition demanding that the government overturn a law enabling it to store the fingerprints of all Dutch citizens in a central electronic database.

Since September 21, everyone applying for a Dutch passport is obligated to provide four fingerprints for storage in a database that is accessible to municipal authorities, the national intelligence service AIVD and the Justice Department.

A group, calling itself Het Nieuwe Rijk (The New Empire) launched the online petition late Tuesday and has also distributed brochures in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, comparing the move to administrative methods used by Nazis during World War II to persecute Jews.

In brochures, strongly resembling standard government brochures in layout, typesetting and language, Het Nieuwe Rijk offers to tattoo people's social security numbers on their left arms at no cost. The group suggests the tattoos that 'passing through international borders' and dealing with the government would then go 'smoother'.

The Interior Affairs Ministry quickly released a statement saying it had filed a complaint with the police against the group for 'misleading the public' with a brochure 'which gives the impression it originates from the government.'

Interior Affairs Deputy Minister Ank Bijleveld, the statement, distanced herself from 'the tasteless content of the brochure which appeals to the memory of the Holocaust' and added: 'People could be hurt by these associations.'

A spokesman for the ministry confirmed to the German Press Agency dpa that a complaint had been filed, but a spokesman for police in The Hague told dpa, 'No complaint has been registered so far.'

The government, which said central storage of fingerprints is necessary to curb passport fraud, said the database would 'only be used to identify suspects' and not for 'regular' police work.

However, critics of the new law have warned that only a slight amendment to the law is required to allow police unlimited use of the database.

Civil protest against the law has grown rapidly in recent months. Several organizations have jointly filed suits against the government for violating civil privacy rights.

On September 20, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected an emergency suit by several Dutch civil rights groups to block the law pending a final legal decision.

The ECHR ruled that storing data centrally would not result in 'irreparable damage'. The court did not however rule out the possibility that it might issue a different decision in a new case once all ongoing procedures in the Netherlands are completed.

The Hague-based national privacy watchdog CPB has repeatedly expressed concern over the plan for a central fingerprint database for 17 million Dutch nationals, calling it a 'disproportional measure' to reduce passport fraud.

The CPB does not object to storing fingerprints with municipalities for this purpose, but says merging all databases into a single one to which several authorities would have access infringes upon individual privacy.

A central database 'containing biometric data brings serious and possibly unnecessary risks for citizens' personal lives, against which they cannot arm themselves,' the CBP said in a report on the passport law.

The watchdog has also highlighted the fact that its European counterparts already warned against the risks of a storing biometric data centrally in 2004.

The Netherlands is the only country in the European Union that plans to establish a central electronic fingerprint database. In other European countries, people provide two fingerprints that are stored only in a chip in their passports.