Norwegian ePassports Delay Requested

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on September 28, 2005

The head of an independent administrative body in Norway has flagged concerns with the imminent launch of Norway's ePassports.

Anders Jacobsen from RFID Buzz points to this interesting bit of news (and has kindly translated this news from Norwegian into English). The Norwegian official is quoted as saying:

"In my view it is entirely incomprehensible that one wishes to launch this new type of passport already now," says director of Datatilsynet, Georg Apenes. In addition to the normal passport photo, the photo in the new passports will be scanned and added to a chip in the travel document. Using this chip, the photo in the passport can be compared to the digital photo stored in a central database."

Privacy is a touchy issue. If you want to allay people's concerns about invasion of privacy, it requires persuasion, not dictates.

Before pushing through any kind of initiative in which RFID chips or other identifying chips are used to track people, the government has to spend some time on public education AND provide a forum where concerns can be aired in the light of day. Ignoring that concerns exist does not help make the public more comfortable with the use of automatic ID technologies.