Government Authorizes Fingerprinting All Citizens
Fingerprints would be made accessible to law enforcement authorities upon presentment of a court order.
This draft law, if passed by the Knesset, would represent a further government intrusion upon individual privacy, after the law passed last year that provides for all phone conversation in the country to be recorded and stored in a databank, to enable them to be accessed by court order when desired by police and prosecutors.
While the law provides for fingerprints (as well as conversations) to be kept confidential, the mere existence of these databases makes it possible for unauthorized use to be made of them. Sufficiently sophisticated hackers — perhaps including law enforcement officials with access to the databases — could access the information held within them, or perhaps even change the information to exonerate criminals, incriminate the innocent, or otherwise take advantage of innocent citizens.