mr president i am very pleased to say that the uk is excluded from this regulation because it is not part of the schengen zone
however the british government has said that it will keep in step with the regulation to ensure that its documents are not perceived as second class
this implies that it thinks the proposals are first class and then it will be bound by the substance of the regulation anyway
but as this report shows all kinds of issues are raised concerning the authenticity of biometric data and its verification
what kind of originating documents are used for the initial identification of the applicant and how can it be sure that they are authentic
once a passport has been issued it is not of much use unless the data on it can be checked against the identity of the holder on some kind of national or centralised identity database
the report acknowledges that there should be highly secure storage mediums for keeping such information but we all know from experience in britain that there is no such thing as a highly secure medium for storing such data
personal and highly sensitive information for literally millions of people has been lost or disclosed from government databases over the last few years
everyone in the uk knows that their personal information is not safe in the hands of our government
this report does not speak about the reliability of biometric data itself
in fact the uk passport service's biometrics enrolment trial in two thousand and four showed a failure rate of one in three for facial recognition one in five for fingerprints and one in twenty for iris scans
biometric identification is an attractive idea but it is not the fail-safe mechanism we all might imagine
the uk independence party will therefore be voting against this report
