INTRODUCTION OF A MACHINE-READABLE ID-CARD
Within half a year, Swiss citizens will receive a new, machine-readable ID-card the size of a credit card. The Swiss Federal Office of Police (BAP) praises the card as a masterpiece of technical pioneering making counterfeits practically impossible. Swiss civil liberties activists are less enthusiastic.
According to a police official, "initially, the declared intention of the Federal Office was to use the personal data stored on the new ID-card for all imaginable purposes of search and surveillance and to make them available to all departments of the BAP and related agencies such as the Federal Office of Prosecution".
This would, for instance, have enabled the State Security to track the cross-border movements of suspect citizens.
The Federal data protection authority, however, obtained an ordinance that will restrict the use of the data stored on the ID-card.
Critics of the card say that the draft ordinance is too vague. As a matter of fact, the draft provides for computerised storage in the central police database of both the photograph and the signature (i.e. a graphological sample) contained on the application form. At all Swiss borders and airports the machine-readable ID-card allows for the immediate access to all connected police information systems containing data on Swiss citizens. The border check-points are already linked with the Swiss criminal search system RIPOL. Besides information relevant to criminal prosecution, this system also contains data on missing psychiatrical patients and discriminating marks such as "HIV-infected".
The Swiss drug database, DOSIS, and the state security computer, ISIS, are not being linked for the time being.
But Paul Rechsteiner, a social-democrat MP, is unhappy with the draft ordinance and particularly with provisions permitting the use of the ID-data for purposes beyond the requirements of border checks, namely for prosecution and "warding off threats to public security".
Other critics have warned that the new ID-card constitutes a further temptation for police authorities to gather information on persons not actually suspected of a crime. They emphasise that a mere ordinance (rather than a law) provides insufficient legal guarantee against a gradually extended use of the ID-card for other purposes. "In other political circumstances the Federal Council [government] can amend any ordinance without the consent of the people or the parliament", Mr. Rechsteiner says.
Source: Die WochenZeitung, 18.2.94.