Brussels unveils plan to use fingerprints on EU passports

The European Commission on Thursday (29 June) unveiled technical details of a new type of biometric data to be used in EU citizens' passports.

Along with facial features that must be part of newly issued travel documents by late August, member states will be obliged to issue passports with two fingerprints by 2009.

Brussels points out that these data (fingerprints) are more sensitive and so decided to protect them by a more advanced system, with the EU set to be the very first bl...