The US government says it’ll soon demand biometric passports for people wanting to enter the country.

Thus, it seems in January, Britain will snap to with a six-month trial of biometric technology involving 10,000 volunteers.

The UKPS [UK Passport Service] will, "test facial, iris, and fingerprint recording and recognition in an attempt to determine which process is the least invasive for passport holders," says Laura Rohde in an IDG News Service story here, quoting a Home Office spokeswoman.

"The trial will also help determine how the technology works on a broad scale, what the costs will be, and how well people will accept the technology."

Aparently, the UK government contends biometrics in passports and then in ID cards will, "strengthen identity authentication and reduce identity fraud and related crimes. Secretary of State for the Home Department David Blunkett last month outlined the Identity Cards Bill that calls for a system of ID cards, to be created by 2010, that will carry biometric identifiers in an embedded chip, all linked to a ’secure national database’."

That’s nice.

A chip with "biometric facial identifiers" will first be included in passports beginning in 2005, which will in turn ‘build the base’ for the ID card plan, the report says, adding:.

"One of the reasons we are doing this with passports first is because the U.S. government has said it will require biometric passports for people wishing to enter the United States," the government spokesperson says. "At first that was to begin in October 2004, but that has be delayed to an unspecified date in 2005."

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2003 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.

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