Biometric system imposed by Bush… now raises trouble in Algeria

Each time the biometric technology, as a system to identify people according to biological data, enters a country it raises violent reactions, from America to Europe and Arab countries, because it brings privacy of people’s lives to public and globalization, especially when it contradicted religion and values of society as the issue of the veil and beard in Algeria.

• It is enough to know that the inclusion of biometric   security and safety in passports issued by European countries included in Law n° 2252/2004  of the European council of December 13, 2004 in the Official Gazette of the European Council on December 29,2004. Although it committed the member states to adopt standards and data of biometric security in passports, according to a unified system, but these countries were unable to adapt security measures in accordance with the required system only after years.
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• France adopted biometric systems in June 2009 despite being one of the world’s largest producers of IT technology, as this system requires complicated techniques, objective and social connected with the specificity of the citizens, that are kept within the data base of the picture, fingerprint and marks, while this was not required except in cases of inspection on suspicious persons who are searched by security services.  
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• Despite trying to view the advantages of this security system, but is already causing quite a stir in all the countries that introduced it including USA, which produced and exported it, and then imposed it on the rest of the world, including European and Arab countries,  especially as deadlines to apply this system as dictated by international law are not followed by an international body to protect people from abuse in using data collected by administrations.
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• The use of biometric system already brought trouble to citizens in Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and most recently in France, where people saw additional complications and an assault on the privacy of their lives, although the question of veil and beard was not a problem for them as non-Moslems, as the system respected privacy of the minority of Muslims living in Europe, except in France.
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• Biometric authentication by the device that identifies the passport’s slice through the face which contains the person’s special marks, as there are 60 mark such as the distance between the two eyes, shape of the mouth and its angles, circle of the face, shape of nose and even position of ears.
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• However, using the pictures as a fundamental criterion in the passport has its limitation and drawbacks as admitted by those who create the biometric system. As stated in a report by the commission of physical safety techniques of the French club of safety systems of communications prepared in June 2003 before even starting the issuance of the biometric passport. It shows several difficulties in the application of biometric authentication of the face, including in the case of twins, as some people refused to put their profiles for psychological or religious reasons, as well as the excessive use of makeup, or for having some of the indispensable accessories like glasses or wounds and scares on the face.
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• The U.S. administration under George W. Bush forced the rest of the world to use the biometric documents in order to combat terrorism and arrest counterfeiters who exploited the classical passports in order to travel across the world and intensify their criminal activity, however; biometric system applied in many countries, before and after being imposed by the International Organization for Civil Aviation, recognises the existence of obstacles and drawbacks related to degrees of safety that couldn’t prove that the degree of safety is zero.