Re: National Identity Card

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2015 07:06:17 -0700

Hi Ish,
At 04:20 01-10-2015, Ish Sookun wrote:
>If the minutiae cannot be converted back to
>fingerprints, that doesn't render the minutiae
>as being non-biometric or non-personal. The
>Supreme Court of Mauritius prohibits the storage
>of "biometric information data" and that should include the minutiae.

Yes.

>The answer contains the words "...I am advised".
>The minister is "advised" by his team of
>technical officers and the Permanent Secretary.
>It would be interesting to know whether the
>Ministry of Technology, Communication and
>Innovation consider "minutiae" to be biometric and personal or not.

Yes.

>Once there is a trap, a compromise would be
>skipping the trap. The argument that "a database
>of fingerprints would be useful to reduce crime"
>does not stand. If someone is doing a crime, as
>you said, the criminal would not leave his
>fingerprints behind; worst he might leave the fingerprints of someone else :)

It will be interesting to see what will happen if
there is too much reliance on fingerprints.

I'll comment about the "personal data" comment in
your blog article. Data protection in Singapore
seems different from the local laws. One issue
is that people have been focusing on
"fingerprint" instead of whether the data
qualifies as personal data or sensitive personal
data. A second issue is that there has been very
little informed discussion about the processing of the sensitive/personal data.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Thu Oct 01 2015 - 16:07:38 PST