France: ID card scheme criticised
01 March 2005
In February 2005, the French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, presented a draft law to establish a programme (INES, the secure national electronic identity scheme) to introduce a new ID card with a chip containing citizens’ biometric data, facial and iris scans, digitised photographs and fingerprints, as well as encryption mechanisms to hide certain data, digital signatures and an authentication mechanism. The scheme seeks to begin introducing the new ID cards in early 2007, to make it compulsory to carry them (which has not been the case in France since 1955) and may charge people for the cost of the document. The reasons that were presented for introducing this new measure were to combat crime, illegal immigration, identity theft and terrorism.
Members of the
Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL, national commission for IT and liberties) have already expressed their “strong reservations” before it was asked by Villepin to offer an opinion. CNIL commissioner, François Giquel, expressed his concern:
It is no longer a piece of card or a secret code, but an intimate part of your body that becomes an identifier. If you ask persons, as definitive proof [of their identity] to show an eye, a finger or a face, they are marked for life, it’s a social revolution.
As a measure to avoid the misuse of information, the data is envisaged to be stored and centralised into separate large-scale national databases; for fingerprints, for photographs, for cardholders, and for holders’ addresses. Nonetheless, Alain Weber from the
Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH, Human Rights League), expressed his view that the separation of the data does not neutralise the possibility that they may be “interconnected”. A former member of the CNIL, Louis Jonet, noted that if such a database had existed between 1940 and 1945, “some Jews would have been unable to escape the round-ups”.
The INES scheme, on which a public consultation was opened on 1 February 2005, drew criticism from civil society groups, six of which issued a joint statement on 26 May 2005 entitled “INES, from suspicion to generalised trailing” and presented an appeal which is open for signature (see below) calling for the scheme to be withdrawn. The statement criticises the adoption of the draft law by an inter-ministerial committee on 11 April, before the public consultation period was over, arguing that rather than an open discussion, it is an exercise to “legitimate a government decision that has already been taken”. It focuses on issues such as it being compulsory, or citizens having to pay for it, rather than on whether such a card is necessary. They dismissed the use of identity fraud and terrorism to justify the electronic ID card scheme as “alibis”, arguing that there had been insufficient investigation as to the extent of the first phenomenon to demonstrate that it is a real problem, and that it is only one of a range of means used by terrorist networks. They added that the majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out by “people using their own identity”. They also argued that it will lead to the “multiplication” and “trivialisation” of identity checks, and that its multiple functions (to receive different kinds of services), presented as “comfortable” for users by the interior ministry, may end up making it indispensable for citizens even if it were not to be made compulsory by law, relegating those who do not acquire one to the status of “second-class citizens”. They warn of the risk that the generalisation of the use of the new electronic ID card will result in the creation of an “exhaustive database of the entire French population”, and that the establishment of a fingerprint database may lead to an increase in the number of people who are erroneously involved in criminal investigations, due to the imperfection of fingerprint recognition procedures.
Libération, 21.4.05; IDG News Service, 13.4.05; Joint