Dutch government wants fingerprints of every dutchman in national database

CCTV, government keyloggers, datamining, biometric passports, ... we have seen a lot of measures that are akin to a double-edged sword. I have been very wary of the use of biometrics in ePassports. The use of this information to build a national database is only one step further. I do think that biometrics can help and could be used to limit fraud. But iris scans have a lower chance of being misused compared to fingerprints. The Dutch government is the first to prove me right:

State secretary Ank Bijleveld of The ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations wants fingerprints of every Dutchman in a national database (eng) and make it available to the police and the justice department.

It's not this specific fingerprint database that scares me. What really scares me is: where will this end? In the first place, the fingerprints taken during passport application were supposed be used only to prevent fraud with identity documents. Now, they want them make it available to the police and the justice department. The government has been busy with a public transport chipcard and a GPS system for vehicles for tax purposes. With those systems, the government can track the movement of every person. An interesting question is when they will.

What the government probably doesn't realize is that once a person has given his/her fingerprint to the government, he/she will be extra carefull not to leave behind fingerprints while committing a crime. In other words, as soon as you start building a fingerprint database, it will become useless.

During World War II, the Dutch government had a database which contained information about every Jew in the Netherlands. They had no bad intention with it, but the Nazis gratefully used it for their own purpose. So, the question is not what the government will do with it, but what will other people, like criminals, do with it once they obtain it. And since the government is really good at losing laptops, USB sticks and CD-roms, that's probably only a matter of time. (Source: leisink.org)

Thank you Mr. Leisink, I couldn't have said it any better.