Security Architectures in the EU

Tag: Automatic Fingerprint Identification System

  • Asylum seekers: EU fingerprint database to be expanded as it reaches capacity limit

    Asylum seekers: EU fingerprint database to be expanded as it reaches capacity limit

    Eurodac, the EU biometric migration control database, is reaching its capacity limit. However, a political agreement to expand it has not progressed since 2016. Now an immense number of queries by police from Germany come as a surprise. According to the Dublin Convention, those states are responsible for asylum applications where protection seekers first arrive […]

  • Schengen Information System: Fingerprint matching now obligatory throughout the EU

    Schengen Information System: Fingerprint matching now obligatory throughout the EU

    For two years now, the largest European police database has had a technique for cross-checking dactyloscopic data. The proportion of false hits is said to be in the per mille range. A comparable German system contains data records on 5.3 million persons. In 2013, the EU Commission completed years of work on upgrading the Schengen […]

  • Facial recognition at German police authorities increased by more than a third

    Facial recognition at German police authorities increased by more than a third

    Millions of faces, fingerprints and palm prints are stored in German police databases. Law enforcement agencies are also processing more and more biometric data at the EU level. The comparison of photographs by German police authorities has again increased sharply in the past year. This is shown by statistics based on information provided by the […]

  • New EU system for fingerprint identification activated

    New EU system for fingerprint identification activated

    The Schengen Information System (SIS II) now also has a system for identifying people using fingerprints. After a two-year trial period, the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) was activated in March by the European Agency for the Operational Management of Large IT Systems (eu-LISA). This centrally located “fingerprint identification system” can be searched, for example, […]