The Caribbean island of Antigua plans to establish a system for capturing, digitising and archiving citizens' fingerprints during the electoral process.According to the Minister of Information Melford Nicholas, this can be done by incorporating fingerprints into the biometric data that will be contained in the new microchipped e-passports being produced by the Canadian Banknote Company."This was not part of the original featureߪbut the Cabinet felt it was important to be able to go that extra step to be able to ensure that when an individual is issued with a passportߪtheir identity can be vouched for and there can be no compromise," Nicholas said.Nicholas said it was due to the way in which the Act was crafted that "consideration was not given for the capture of the fingerprint information" but argued that when voters submit their print "it's a resource that can have multi-use potential".He added that besides use in passports the government had other applications for fingerprint records which he said could form part of the state's own Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)."We can have that same fingerprinting information supporting crime prevention and crime management for access by the police," Nicholas said.
Recent Video
- New non-profit trade association of HAND will standardise global talent ID
- No cards, no phones: J.P. Morgan’s biometric revolution in payments
- Anthony Vidiano on building the future of access management
- Charisma Check wins 2025 Start-Up Pitching Competition, advancing identity verification and background checks for dating app users
- How to protect one billion Amazon customers: Lessons from continuous risk assessments
