Fingerprinting debate resurfaces

A DPP lawmaker yesterday vowed to campaign for the reinstatement of a budget for setting up a fingerprint databank.

The Legislative Yuan and Executive Yuan began the process of legislating for the establishment of a national fingerprint databank eight years ago, culminating in the 1997 amendment to Article Eight of the Household Registration Law (戶籍法).

The amendment says that people over the age of 14 must have their fingerprints recorded when issued with ID cards.

In the face of opposition from human rights activists, however, the Executive Yuan has not allocated funds to set up the databank. A NT$1.2 billion budget for the proposal was again withdrawn in August this year amid objections from activists.

"Peter Huang (黃文雄) said it would be a violation of human rights," said DPP Legislator Wang Lie-ping (王麗萍). "We do not think it should be a problem, however, because a large number of advanced countries have such databanks."

Wang, who was speaking at a press conference on the subject at the legislature yesterday, said that the US, Australia, South Korea, France, Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada use national fingerprint databanks or "similar systems."

Huang is an advisor to the president and a member of the President's Advisory Group on Human Rights. The group said that the 1997 amendment would invade human rights rather than protect them.

"Many people misunderstood this issue," said Liu Hui-fu (劉輝福), chief of the Taipei Criminal Police Department's Fingerprint Analysis Division (刑事警察局指紋室分析組). "It has nothing to do with privacy. You can't tell what a person looks like from his or her fingerprints. Nor can you tell where he or she lives."

Sandy Yeh (葉毓蘭), director of the Continuing Education and Training Center at the Central Police University, said that currently only criminals or males who have completed or are still undergoing military service were in practice required to have their fingerprints recorded.

According to police statistics, approximately 200 bodies are identified each year by means of military fingerprint records.

"In the US, every new-born baby leaves their fingerprints upon application for their social security cards," said Yeh. "The fingerprint information is only used by the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for criminal investigation purposes. That is what we are trying to do."

"Our IDs are too easily duplicated or faked without a fingerprint identification system," she continued. "And because of this, many countries do not welcome Tai-wanese residents, especially after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. It is not because our citizens are terrorists. It is because they do not know whether our passports are real or not."

Wang plans to hold another hearing at the Legislative Yuan in the near future to continue to make the case for the databank.

"Another NT$700 million would be required for a three-year project to build up a national databank system of fingerprints," said Liu.