The State Service for Personal Data Protection has said that the law on a single state demographic register involves the collection of excessive information about a person, which does not comply with international law.
“We object to collecting such a huge amount of information, some of which is not needed,” the first deputy head of the service, Lilia Oleksiuk, said during a roundtable on the introduction of biometric documents in Ukraine held in Kyiv last week.
She noted that under international law, biometric data should only be used in foreign travel passports, but not in national identity cards.
“The State Service for Personal Data Protection believes that collecting biometric data on every single citizen of Ukraine for all the documents is a bit too much,” Oleksiuk said.
As reported, on October 2, 2012 the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a bill on the introduction of biometric passports in Ukraine.
The document foresees the introduction of electronic passports containing electronic chips with biometric information for traveling abroad, according to standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
According to the bill, the passports of Ukrainian citizens will be produced in the form of cards with contactless smart chips and issued no later than 30 calendar days from the date of the submission of a relevant application. The electronic passports will include the name of the state, the name of the document, the full name of the holder, the holder’s gender, citizenship, date of birth, and a unique number in the register, the number of the document, the date of the document’s expiry, the date of issue of the document, the name of the agency that issued the document, the place of birth, a photo and the signature of the holder.
The information about parents or trustee of the holder may be included to the document upon a relevant written request.
On October 15, Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Valeriya Lutkovska called on the president to veto the bill on the introduction of biometric passports and return it to parliament for revision by experts.
