Friday, March 27, 2009

Plan to introduce biometric IDs stirs privacy debate.

By Shahar Ilan

Tags: Sheetrit, Knesset

No other democracy has yet introduced biometric identity cards, which Israel recently decided to do, and the only nondemocracy to have done so is Hong Kong, according to a study by the Knesset's research center.

One reason for this reluctance is that biometric identity cards require establishing a centralized database with biometric data on every citizen and legal resident of the country.

Biometric passports, in contrast, are becoming more common in the West. However because people can choose whether or not to obtain a passport, which is not true of ID cards, this is considered less problematic from the perspective of privacy. Read More...

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