EU is issuing biometric passports where are loaded your fingerprints and some EU states started to issue biometric citizen IDs, where are fingerprints stored too. So it is kind of already going on?
Additionally citizen IDs are nothing new, at least in Eastern Europe, where you will get one when you reach 15 years of age.
Interesting fact. I thought that having an ID card is pretty much mandatory in whole EU. In Slovakia you get one at age of 15 (I think) and it has biometric data - picture and fingerprints. You are not required by law to carry it with you, but it can cause delays if need to be verified by police or other authority. It’s also used to login into e-gov services with a card reader and your pin - but it’s quite limited at this point.
Not that different in the EU. Most member states keep track of EU citizens from birth with a citizen ID. To get a phone, you need to show said ID. There are states which keep biometrics in the ID and passports, such as face biometrics and fingerprints. Some EU states even sample DNA from the child at time of birth and keep in their records for future use.
Sort of a tangent, but I wonder if there are any EU countries that have mandatory biometric ID cards. After a cursory (5-10 minute) search I found countries that either used to have ID cards but currently don't, used to have biometric ID cards but currently don't require biometrics, or have biometric ID cards that are optional. It does seem likely that in the future some country will, if it hasn't already, concede and mandate ID cards that contain biometrics.
Practically, anyway, GDPR seems like a much more effective measure.
Understood - but most EU states would have a national ID card which would make them ‘known’ to their own government. Not sure if all include biometrics (I know that the ID cards here in France are not all like that, though passports today are) but national ID cards cover all adults and children. Just seems weird that they would not include a couple of hundred million people that they definitely know something about by virtue of their citizenship of an EU country.
As part of the roll-out of new initiatives devised in response to attacks on European soil in recent years, the EU is also seeking to improve the security features of ID cards used by citizens of member states in the Schengen travel area. Fingerprints and facial images will be stored on a chip in the cards.
An estimated 80 million Europeans currently have non-machine-readable ID cards without biometric identifiers.
So EU has mandated that all id cards have your fingerprints in it. Thus requiring to scan your fingerprints and store it in digital form.
My id card is going to expire soon and I feel very unease that my country treats me like a dangerous criminal. I did nothing to justify that. Also I don’t believe anybody that they won’t store them in their databases nor that they are safe. There is no 100% safe system in the world and history teaches us, that if someone has your personal data, he will keep it as long as he can.
So, to the point. I was searching through the web if there’s any way to decline providing my fingerprints or any stories of people who did this. And there’s nothing to be found. Is this possible? That no one has tried that and written about it? Or do we live in such Orwellian world, that information like that is not allowed to be found or submitted to any major site?
Yep. All European Union countries are eventually going to use electronic IDs (eID) with Smartchips that can be read by a Smart Card reader.
A number of governments already use eIDs, and have elaborate databases for citizens, such as Croatia. See: https://gov.hr/en
There are also other forms of government facilitated authentication (e.g. electronic signatures or citizen services), and depending on the level of security needed.
It’s amazing that the United States does not have this functionality, which would be useful moving from state to state.
I guess the US passport card is the closest example, but it is useless except as identification.
Isn't it like this in practically every European country? We have ID cards with every one of those fields printed on them, including thumbprints. All of that information is probably in one big table somewhere.
> Millions of people in the UK don’t have a passport or driving licence and there’s no magic document that lets everyone prove their identity.
That's why most(all?) EU countries have ID cards which are (usually? sometimes? probably depends on the country) mandatory. Especially the new EU standard version, which will of course take time to be deployed everywhere, is pretty great with a chip containing the biometric and other data allowing for automatic verification ( via an app or device at certain places, like airports).
Americans can actually get "passport card" which functions like the EU national identity cards, within the United States. It is intended for use within the United States, as ID laws are changing. However, the RFID chip in the US passport card only has the identifying number encoded in it, for lookup in government databases. US biometric passports of course contain all of the traveler's information. Likewise EU national identity cards are biometric, as this is the standard.
With respect to the EU, as you know, there is to be a transition to biometric EU national ID cards, if countries have not already switched to them. The vast majority of countries already have. Some EU national ID cards are more useful than others, giving people online identities, for example.
Although I am culturally an American, I am also Croatian. I hold two citizenships. Croatia participates in the eID scheme [1]. Next time I go to Croatia, I am getting my eID, so I have an official identity on the internet. I am excited, as silly as it sounds.
Outside Europe? Identity verification is mandatory in the EU and afaik there are very few states that haven't implemented it in local law (the netherlands and croatia, I think).
Additionally citizen IDs are nothing new, at least in Eastern Europe, where you will get one when you reach 15 years of age.
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