Deri announces biometric database to be required from 2017
The minister of the interior has announced that the database will be mandatory for all new identity documents issued from next year; however, this will first require legislation.
Minister of the Interior Aryeh Deri (Shas) announced on Thursday afternoon that it was his intention that the biometric database be made mandatory for all new identity documents issued from 2017. The minister was speaking at an event at the Population and Immigration Authority (PIA) in Tel Aviv to mark one million persons having joined the database.
"From here on, anybody who applies for an identity document from the Ministry of the Interior—an identity card or passport—will receive a biometric one. We have already decided this; I have also decided that there will be a database. What will be on the database will be decided shortly," said Deri. Despite the minister's claim, such a program requires the approval of the full Knesset.
Deri himself joined the database, and he added, "Smart documentation and the biometric database are a technological and security leap that allows a person to safeguard his identity in the best way possible… In these crazy days in which terrorism is striking in Israel and in the world, safeguarding the identity of residents and citizens is necessary."
Three years after the database's creation, the PIA released on Thursday a report that in the transitioning process to the new documentation, some 800,000 biometric passports and an equivalent number of biometric identity cards have been issued. The database includes a face picture and two fingerprints of each person only.
According to the PIA, the database's security in general, and the response to any internal threat posed by employees in particular, is managed according to the guidelines from the Shin Bet's State Authority for Information Security. The database is classified as top secret, and strict security mechanisms are implemented as needed.
A message from the PIA reads, "All activity in the biometric data requires the presence of at least two employees, and every action is monitored and controlled. The complete separation between the biometric data and the biographic and demographic data makes the Israeli biometric database unique when compared to other biometric databases in the country and the world."
However, the establishment of such a database provoked harsh criticism from many organizations that warned that it would harm Israeli citizens' privacy and would lead to data leakage.
The database was first established as a pilot scheme in July 2013 that was supposed to last two years. This was extended twice, the second time by Deri himself upon his receiving the interior ministry portfolio. The date of this extension is set to expire at the end of the year, when the minister of the interior will have to introduce new legislation in the Knesset to continue the program.
