Privacy & Data Protection as Human Rights

FROM EPIC NEWS


Privacy commissioners from around the world called on governments and international organizations to establish data protection and privacy as fundamental human rights. At a privacy conference in Montreux, Switzerland, they also called for effective safeguards to limit the use of biometric passports and identity cards so that centralized database will not be established. They also urged greater cooperation with NGOs.

A day before the large privacy conference started, EPIC and other European and American civil liberties groups sponsored a conference entitled "Strategies for International Privacy Protection -- Issues, Actors, and Future Cooperation." Its principal aim was to debate one of the two most sensitive privacy issues governments are grappling with and to reinforce cooperation between non-governmental organizations and data protection authorities. Privacy officials, NGOs, and representatives from the industry all participated to the discussion.

In the first panel on data retention, a speaker pointed to the many security risks and high costs for the industry -- Internet Service Providers and telecommunications providers -- and police and security agencies that a regime of retention of traffic and location data would introduce. A high risk also exists for police agencies themselves, since their traffic and location data would be stored in one place, and create a tempting target for criminals. In the second panel on biometrics, the Swiss Privacy Commissioner Hanspeter Thur described the pilot biometric passports project Switzerland had launched that was ended because of the high privacy risks that are inherent in the central database of the biometric passports program. Speakers also discussed the lack of transparency and the absence of public debate that supra-national organizations and governments around the world showed when they introduced proposals for biometric passports.

In a resolution, a group of privacy commissioners called for effective safeguards to limit the risks inherent to biometrics. They sought to restrict the use of biometrics in passports and identity cards to verification purposes -- the biometric data in the document would be compared with the data provided by the holder when presenting the document -- thereby prohibiting any centralization of data. The privacy commissioners suggested that governments make a "strict distinction between biometric data collected and stored for public purposes," such as border patrol, "on the basis of legal obligations, and for contractual purposes on the basis of consent."

Declaration of Montreux (pdf):
http://www.edsb.ch/e/aktuell/konferenz/declaration-e.pdf

Resolution on Biometrics (pdf):
http://www.edsb.ch/e/aktuell/konferenz/biometrie-resolution-e.pdf

Privacy Conference 2005:
http://www.privacyconference2005.org/

"Strategies for International Privacy Protection - Issues, Actors, and Future Cooperation":
http://www.edri.org/panels