EU Commission Proposes Biometric Fingerprints in ID Cards
The European Commission recently proposed a new term to include digital images of all the EU citizens’ fingerprints on identity cards. They are planning to eliminate the paper-based documents that are easy to forge by intruders and criminals.
A large number of people enter into the European countries by using falsified documents. The Commission wants to impose this technology to find out which criminals are using fraudulent documents and create chaos in the countries of EU.
The commission wants to implement two biometric entities on the ID card including a facial image and an image of two fingers. Though, they said that it isn’t mandatory to introduce biometric ID cards for EU countries.
As per the statement published by the commission, new ID cards shouldn’t be valid for more than ten years. The non-compliant cards should be invalid within five years, and non-machine readable cards within two years.
Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s First Vice-President said in a statement,
“Today, we are stepping up our actions to deprive criminals and terrorists of the tools and resources they need to perpetuate their crimes.”
The EU Commission recently reported that approximately 80 million Europeans currently carry a non-machine readable ID card, let alone biometric data.
The European countries all have a different view about implementing a national ID card. The Belgian government issues a biometric ID card but does not store their citizen’s fingerprint data. Germans have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to provide the fingerprint data or not. The Spanish government does include fingerprint data on their ID card.
However, to make a fingerprint deployment project successful, biometric readers play a significant role. If the reader cannot perform well in rugged environmental conditions, this can only increase the chances that the project as a whole will fail.
M2SYS brings the M2-EasyScan Pro™ fingerprint device that is highly durable with advanced technology for use under any conditions. It is an affordable fingerprint device for both large scale and small scale fingerprint identification projects.
Source: Reuters
