German Hackers Publish Interior Minister’s Fingerprint to Protest Against Biometric IDs
Posted on March 30th, 2008 by bile Categories and Tags: Uncategorized, Angela Merkel, Bavaria, CCC, Dirk Engling, e-passports, fascism, Germany, Interior Ministry, police state, politics, privacy, Technology, Wolfgang SchaubleA group of hackers has captured the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister as a protest against plans to use biometric data in e-passports. The latest edition of their magazine, Die Datenschleuder, contains a plastic foil that reproduces the whorls and swirls of Wolfgang Schauble’s digit, meaning there are 4,000 copies of the politician’s prints just waiting to be attached to someone’s finger.
The CCC got its hands on Schauble’s prints thanks to a sympathiser, who scarpered with a glass used by the minister during a panel discussion and handed it over to the hackers. Dirk Engling, a spokesman for CCC, defended the group’s actions, claiming it was a warning shot, and that fingerprints “certainly [did] not [belong] in the e-Pass.”
Along with Minister Schauble’s fingerprint, the group also published a wish-list of other politicians whose biometric data they’d like to get their mitts on—including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Guenther Beckstein—as well as a guide on how to capture someone’s fingerprints from a glass successfully.
The lawyer hired by the CCC sees it like this: “If journalists and citizens were to do what the government is doing—that is, the collection and use of biometric data—then the prosecutor would be knocking at their doors.” Meanwhile, a po-faced spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, refused to rule out legal action against the fingerprint-stealing hackers.
Technology can be the great equalizer. As the police state grows there are some of those who will be able to do things such as this to show those in power just how this technology can be used and abused and hopefully place things in perspective. Unfortunately I see these types of stunts becoming more and more persecuted with increasingly harsh punishments. The pols don’t like to be made to look the fool. As long as we have tension between nations however we should be able to at least have international hackers and crackers able to perform these stunts without too much risk.
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