Finland fingerprints all Finns and foreigns

The Finnish government is pushing ahead with plans to collect all citizens' fingerprints for passports and to give police access to fingerprints for crime detection. The bill is expected to go before the Finnish parliament this week and is likely to come into force in spring. Part of the justification is the EU requirement to …

[b]

Reminds me of something

I wish I could put my finger on what it is.

And yes; fire, cleansing fire.

[Robbie Simpson]

Legality ?

Surely this will be ruled illegal by the European courts at the first opportunity ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to dump the EU?

The EU doesn't seem to have anything going for it for most people. Only politicians seem to be making a nice little earner out of it. The rest of us are just getting shafted by the EU.

It is interesting, since nationalism and racism have become taboo, the discrimination has been moving to types of people and their paths. The discrimination is still there, and it is probably there in higher proportion, but it is in the creation of a new style of rulers and despots.

We are going to end up like the last Empire to have Europe, and the Empires before that, central control will go to a cabal of pseudo elected officials dictating the lives of millions. Slap Ludwig van Beethoven on your MP3, clipped to your lederhosn, and get ready to grab your fiddle, democracy is burning.

[Luther Blissett]

Conjecture and refutation

Luther was only this morning musing as the kettle boiled on the conjecture that all and only those nations whose history is tainted with genocide, and where the current Estabishment is ideologically and spiritually descended from the perpetrators, are the ones hurrying to implement a clampdown on their people. Is there a secret history of Finland somewhere?

I await the progress reports on collection of fingerprints from neonates, the elderly, and the homeless. I take it Finland still has these.

[ElFatbob]

wow...

a country that is actually ahead of the UK in implementing Orwells Charter...

[Anonymous Coward]

(untitled)

Gosh who would have thought it eh? The Finnish government implying that every Finnish citizen has such criminal tendencies that they need to keep their fingerprints on file. Just goes to show, can't trust that Johnny Foreigner.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vittun...

...paska!

[Jason Togneri]

@ David Wiernicki

Niinpä niin.

Speaking as a UK ex-pat living in Finland (for the past six years or so), I'm doubly shafted on this one. My UK passport is just about due for renewal, probably not long after this goes through. I guess I'll have to do two sets of fingerprinting :-(

[F.]

Just say NO?

There's a great potential for civil disobedience in the Finnish populace. Lots of freedom-loving gun owners. I wonder for how long...

[Schultz]

Eminently useful...

but the implanted RFID chips should be easier to read from a distance.

Hyvää Joulua

[Lars]

Have to bye some temporary fingerprints

I agree with "voihan paskat".

Perhaps Paris Hilton could deliver the fingerprint for fingerprint stickers.

[Steve]

@Jason Togneri

What are the odds that the two sets of prints don't "match" after they've been entered on the respective databases?

[Dan]

@Robbie Simpson

> Surely this will be ruled illegal by the European courts at the first opportunity ?

No, this is already done in Spain and possibly Portugal, you know, those ex-dictatorships.

I expect it's another exercise in harmonisation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess which country this came from

Guess which country had the Presidency of the EU when this biometric anti citizen stuff came from....

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/13/uk_eu_id_proposal/

Awww thank you Britain, Europe is sooooo much better for your contribution to our culture, monetary system, freedom of movement, reduction in micromanaging assshats. Gosh you've shown us the light by not implement a single duty under the treaty of Rome....

As for this: "Time to dump the EU? "

Yep, please f** off and take your Biometrics with you.

[Jason Togneri]

@ Steve

Wouldn't surprise me. Given how bad the skin on my hands is, I'd be surprised if the first set even matched me after a couple of months. I can just see a whole world of headaches opening up...

"But I am really me, honest guv!"

I think I'll just go into hiding. I wonder what this'll do for Finland's already quite extraordinary suicide rate?

Mine's the one with the latex paint in the pocket. I'll get it on my way to an imaginary impartial country.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dan

You sure about Portugal and Spain? Found Portugal, and they have fingerprint ID cards but no mention of storing them into a database.

The 4/12/2008 European Human Rights Courts judgment opens a door for privacy issues as it mentions that fingerprints database solely could infringe citizens right to privacy.

[Dan]

@Anonymous Coward

I'm not 100% sure that Portugal stores ID card fingerprints in a database for police access, but I am 100% sure that Spain do; if you want to live and work in Spain one of the first things you have to do is go to a police station and hand over your fingerprints to get two documents; one is a foreigner ID number and one is an certificate for EU nationals saying your application for residency has been granted and your details have been stored on a central database for residents from other EU countries.

The usual response when raising this subject with a local is that it's a shame that those credit-card sized residency cards for EU nationals were removed (by EU directive) as A4 certificates aren't very practical. The idea is that you show your own EU ID card or passport instead.

When mentioning that the UK doesn't have any ID card that I can use in its place and I'm not dragging my passport everywhere, the response is utter bafflement. How can the state not give people ID numbers? Isn't the result utter administrative chaos? Well, certainly no worse than in Spain... And mention the privacy issue. But how can you get things done if you don't have an ID number?

But anyway, from the different stories that appear in the press, it looks like the idea in Brussels seems to be is that each EU state is responsible for putting its own citizens on their own national database and putting foreign residents from other EU countries into a second database which can easily be linked to their entry in their home country's national database should it be deemed necessary. This is why ID cards are popping up in EU countries which didn't have them before and are becoming compulsary in those EU countries which had optional ID cards before.

[Dan]

@Anonymous Coward

Sorry to go on a two-post ment but in another Register story it seems that there's a new EU working body which will specify what data will be held and how. And ID cards in Europe have a spangly new name, European eID...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/03/enisa_id_cards_analysis/

Obviously this kind of thing is easier to sell in some countries than others.

In Spain there was no practically no discussion at all about the move to chipped ID cards because it was basically the same information held in chip form in addition to what was already written on the card and stored in the national database, what little complaint about privacy there was confined to easily-ignorable blogs. There was more complaint about why the photo is now in black and white instead of colour (probably because of the chip's capacity) and why are we having to wait so long for it to be rolled out in (insert town here).

In the UK it seems this is dragging out quite a while in spite of Labour's efforts, which is nice.

[David]

@Dan

The saving grace of the Spanish system is its complete and utter inefficiency.

They can take whatever data they like, as soon as they put it down they can't find it again without having to get up and walk to a filing cabinet (which isn't in anybodies job description), and as for the idea of the central database actually working for more than half an hour a month, well, the less said the better.

So far I haven't had problems with the no-id card bit, most people happily accept a driving license as valid ID, so I don't need to drag the passport around.

Dave.