Law enforcement officials yesterday said the establishment of a national fingerprint database would enhance domestic security. but local activist groups and several lawmakers said that the idea would violate both human rights and the Constitution.
"Most police hope that Taiwan can build a fingerprint database to cope with more complicated and difficult crimes they face today," Chen Chia-chin (陳家欽), director of Kaohsiung City Police Department's Criminal Investigation Corps told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"A citizen fingerprint database would be helpful when searching for illegal immigrants, laborers and criminals. People's fingerprints on record could help swiftly identify a dead body or a suspect if they have left fingerprints at the scene of a crime," Chen said.
Chen also said closer cross-strait exchange has raised security concerns as more illegal Chinese immigrants commit crimes in Taiwan. In addition, a number of kidnapping cases demonstrated recently that cross-strait criminal groups are increasingly active in the country.
A fingerprint database could help block illegal Chinese immigrants and criminals from entering Taiwan.
"That is an emergency in domestic security," Chen said.
Chen said unresolved criminal cases, such as the murder of Peng Wan-ju (彭婉如), director of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) department of women's affairs, who was raped and killed in Kaohsiung in 1996, or the shooting death of Taoyuan County Magistrate Liu Pang-you (劉邦友) also in 1996, demonstrated the need to create a national fingerprint database.
He said on both cases, police found a number of fingerprints at the crime scene, but because there is no fingerprint file, the cases remain unsolved.
In addition, Chen said a high-ranking police official's daughter was raped and murdered a decade ago. Police investigating that case also found fingerprints, but it took almost eight years to identify and arrest the suspect.
Chen also recalled a case were a national fingerprint database might of been useful. He said a female college student surnamed Lin was raped and murdered in Pingtung County in the early 1990s. Police found fingerprints at the scene of the crime, but were unable to identify the perpetrator. However, when the suspect joined the military service and provided his fingerprint three years after the crime, police swiftly solved the case.
A Criminal Investigation Bureau official who requested anonymity said fingerprint evidence has helped police to solve some of the nation's highest profile criminal cases.
The official also said the "gas bomber" Kao Pao-chung (高寶中) was identified only as a result of the fingerprints he left on a plastic bag. Kao blew up a gas-laden van near Taipei Railway Station in the run-up to last year's legislative elections.
But the case for collecting every citizen's fingerprints suffered a setback last week, when the Council of Grand Justices ruled on June 10 that it was unconstitutional for the government to collect citizens' fingerprints for the new national ID cards. The government originally required applicants to provide fingerprints when applying for the new national ID cards, due to be issued starting July 1.
Some DPP members and civil rights groups slammed the plan as a violation of human rights.
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