Fingerprinting row at Heathrow Terminal 5
[24th March 2008]
The opening of Heathrow Terminal 5 this Thursday is being overshadowed by a debate about whether airport operator BAA should be allowed to take the fingerprints of passengers.
BAA will take four fingerprints and a photograph of passengers at security and these will then be checked at the departure gate. The idea is to stop international passengers swapping boarding cards with a domestic passenger in the departure lounge so they can bypass immigration control.
The Information Commissioners Office, the data protection watchdog, has warned BAA that its fingerprinting plans may breach the Data Protection Act. Other airports, including Gatwick airport and Manchester airport, where departure lounges are used by both domestic and international passengers, just rely on photographs.
“When BAA announced plans for common departure lounges, the Border and Immigration Agency were keen on a reliable biometric element to the border control. After a search of available technologies, fingerprinting was selected as the most robust method by BAA, the BIA and other government departments,” a BAA spokesman said in the company’s defence.
“We are confident that there is no breach of the Data Protection Act and nor do these measures affect the fundamental rights of our passengers, principally because we encrypt all data immediately and destroy it within 24 hours,” the spokesman added.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said: “We want to know why Heathrow needs to fingerprint passengers at all. Taking photographs is less intrusive. So far we have not heard BAA's case for requesting fingerprints”.
BAA is insisting that the opening of Terminal 5 will go ahead as planned on Thursday, but changing the security procedure at the new terminal could be time consuming and costly.
Written by: Nick Purdom
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