Austin Gatt announced in Parliament some days ago that the European Union will fund Malta’s planned electronic identity cards, and that the new system should be in place before the next general election.
He also said that the validity of existing identity cards has been extended so that we need not have one mass renewal now and another one when the new system comes into play. The extended validity is useless to those of us who use an identity card instead of a passport for travel, because the actual date on the card is what counts. So that means renewing it anyway. But that’s a side issue.
Minister Gatt told Parliament that the new biometric cards will have high security features. The Times reported his words as “not least because they would include more information on their owners, including fingerprints. The information would be stored on a chip in the card.”
Strangely enough, there was no reaction from any Member of Parliament who happened to be in the House that night, still less from any who might have read the report at a safe distance. Not even the word “fingerprints” seemed to ring any alarm bells about civil liberties, privacy issues or human rights abuse. And Parliament is jam-packed with lawyers and self-proclaimed progressives of the reincarnated liberal party.
On the Internet, it was a different matter. Lots of people had, like me, logged the word “fingerprints” immediately and gone on line to discuss the implications. The implications, of course, are not pretty. People cannot be fingerprinted unless they have committed a crime or there is strong evidence that they have done so. Only the fingerprints of convicted felons can be stored and then only in a secure police database and certainly not on a general public registry database, even if it is accessible only to a few civil servants.
The strict restrictions on the logging of fingerprints are there because of the vast scope for abuse when fingerprint information is available for individuals who have committed no crimes. There is obvious justification for keeping the fingerprints of criminals, but there is a strong and influential lobby of opinion against even that. Fingerprints, unlike the image of the iris – which is also unique to each person – can be used to track your presence and movements. You don’t leave your iris image behind you as you move around – but you certainly leave your fingerprints, unless you go through life wearing gloves.
If a comprehensive database of fingerprints is available for every Maltese citizen, then when fingerprints are picked up for whatever reason – at a crime scene or wherever – those with access to the fingerprint database can run the prints through and come up with an immediate match. The benefits for crime investigation are clear. The scope for abuse and for invasion of privacy is equally clear.
As the online debate grew hotter, I began to wonder why Austin Gatt hadn’t issued a statement of clarification. He couldn’t possibly be working on a national archive of fingerprints contained in chips on our identity cards, I thought. After all, he’s a lawyer. He is also a rational person. He knows what kind of issues that would throw up.
I didn’t have any trouble understanding why the Labour Party didn’t kick up a fuss about it. That sort of logging of individual data and the policing of private individuals would not strike people like Anglu Farrugia as odd. Anglu Farrugia would probably think it a brilliant idea – imagine the potential for creating a fuss about the scamming of ballot sheets, the sale of voting documents and the manipulation of Labour junkies by Nationalist mercenaries with pots of gold at their disposal.
Unable to believe that we would all be forcibly fingerprinted in a couple of years’ time, without a murmur of disapproval from the Opposition, I emailed Austin Gatt’s office for clarification. Is this true? Has somebody, somewhere, taken leave of his or her senses? The clarification came back.
“The Minister did not say ID Cards would contain everyone’s fingerprints. The Minister said that an electronic identity card has the technical potential to carry various categories of information and be used for different applications. An electronic ID card could, in theory, carry biometric credentials. It can carry banking credentials to be used as an electronic wallet; it can contain health records, or it can contain keys to safely access health or similar records.
“Any of these possible functionalities, and several others, can be built in all ID cards but they can also be excluded and enabled if the users choose to do so. But there is a difference between what an electronic card can do, and what it would be used for. No decisions have yet been taken on what applications will be used and any decisions will be taken in respect of all relevant laws.”
I have the funniest feeling that Inspector Gadget is going to be very disappointed: no fingerprinting, and one expects a giant fuss to be made by politicians of all stripes if there is any suggestion to the contrary. But then again, Inspector Gadget might be happier that way. There’s more to keep him amused with the creation of hairy stories about the purchase of voting documents for €10 from junkies who sport T-shirts proclaiming themselves as Labour voters.
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