blog/data/2015-05-10-fingeravtrykkstvang.txt

   1 Title: Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police
   2 Tags: english, personvern, surveillance
   3 Date: 2015-05-10 16:00
   4
   5 <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
   6 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
   7 criminal or not, are
   8 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
   9 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
  10 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
  11 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
  12 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
  13 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
  14 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
  15 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
  16 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
  17 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
  18 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
  19 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
  20 the police.</p>
  21
  22 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
  23 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
  24 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
  25 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
  26 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
  27 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
  28 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
  29 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
  30 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
  31 is good to know that
  32 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
  33 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
  34 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
  35 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
  36 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
  37 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
  38 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
  39 business getting access to that information.</p>
  40
  41 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
  42 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
  43 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
  44 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
  45 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
  46 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
  47 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
  48
  49 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
  50 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
  51 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
  52 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
  53
  54 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
  55 really could make such decision, I wrote
  56 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
  57 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
  58 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>