Fingerprinting As The New Passport
Scandinavian airline SAS has introduced finger-print check-in on a domestic flight from Stockholm to Gotenburg in Sweden. Its purpose at the moment is to make sure that the person who checks-in luggage is the same as the person boarding the flight, a sure advantage for airport /on-flight security.
While they point out that this is not new on a domestic level, they note that eventually they would like to make this an international system of identification. I am not sure how widespread it would be, but it brings up a couple of different issues.
Where will they get the fingerprint data? Will you have to supply it to a government agency, or will there be a central clearinghouse for fingerprint data, should more carriers decided to implement a system like this? What are the privacy implications?
It may not be a big deal for domestic carriers, but it seems much more complicated when you are discussing and international implementation.
February 1st, 2008 13:18
[…] « Fingerprinting As The New Passport […]
February 4th, 2008 13:47
[…] Last week I remarked on fingerprint identification of fliers. Today, I found something related in the announcement of a biometric e-Passport in Brunei: Compared to the existing passport, the e-passport has an embedded 72-kilobyte chip and several security features. This complies with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which makes it more difficult to duplicate. The chip itself will contain the owner’s facial and fingerprint images. […]