Hi SM,
On 03/13/2016 05:36 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
>
> The blog article mentioned that you wrote a letter to the Data
> Protection Commissioner on 18 February. Did you receive a reply to the
> appeal?
>
I received a letter from the Data Protection Office last week. The
letter is dated 9 March 2016. The letter says:
- fingerprint data (images & minutiae) are not permanently stored into
the system.
- the fingerprint data of all previously enrolled citizens in the MNIC
database have been destroyed. MNIC backup storage have been
electronically destroyed.
- the photograph of the citizen, which is taken during registration, has
always been of JPEG format which remains into the database. The JPEG
format photographs follow the guidelines of the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO) and no biometric data are being extracted.
The letter does not specify the standards of the photo, which I quoted
in my initial letter, i.e ISO/IEC 19794-5.
Upon reading the line *has always been of JPEG format which remains into
the database*, I am tempted to believe that the Commissioner did not
understand how the judgment affects the old practice of keeping the JPEG
format photograph in the database. It seems that the understanding of
the Commissioner is that this has been the practice and there is no
problem in that.
However, the judgment prohibits the storage of any other biometric
information, which raises the question whether or not a digital
photograph is considered biometric in Mauritius. :)
Regards,
--
Ish Sookun
I drink coffee and manage Linux servers for lexpress.mu
Received on Fri Mar 18 2016 - 09:33:26 PST