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title: Flood of lawsuits against biometric passports
date: 2008-02-05 00:00:00
updated: 2010-05-09 20:23:53
author: erdgeist
tags: update, biometrie, epass, schily
A constitutional complaint against the inclusion of biometric characteristics in passports has been lodged following a lawsuit filed by lawyer Michael Schwarz. "Finally a debate long overdue in society flanked by legal steps against the biometric registration of the population is underway", said Chaos Computer Club (CCC) spokesman Dirk Engling.
<!-- TEASER_END -->
On January 28, 2008 the well-known German author Juli Zeh filed a
complaint about the "criminal records department measures". She
justifies her charge that the biometric measures violate the
constitution \[1\] by bypassing the German Parliament with EU regulation
as well as other constitutional issues. Legislative initiatives “for
which there will probably be no parliamentary majority, are being raised
at European level”, she writes. This so-called European by-path was
spurred on significantly by the former German Minister of the Interior,
Otto Schily.
Zeh sees Schily's actions as driven by his private financial commitments
and notes with alarm the fact that “he became a member of the
supervisory board of Byometric Systems AG after leaving office” raising
the specter of conflicts of interest during his period in office. Schily
also was a supervisory board member and shareholder in biometrics
manufacturer SAFE ID solutions AG, as well as a legal consultant to
Siemens AG. \[2\] Schily has so far refused to disclose all of his
earnings as a member of the German Bundestag.
The CCC vehemently protested against biometric passports, previously
making the statement that this serious conflict of political and
financial interests requires an independent oversight. \[3\] Dirk
Engling comments: “There is a question about the extent to which the
rushed introduction of biometric identification documents is primarily
serving the private financial interests of individual public officials.
The use of biometrics, which is widely regarded as insecure, was
obviously pushed through without regard to the interests of citizens and
at enormous costs.”
The CCC supports the actions undertaken by Mr Schwarz and believes it to
be the duty of all affected citizens to contact their elected
representatives about having the presumption of their innocence restored
when interacting with the registration office. Mr Schwarz has published
his statement of claim under \[4\].
### Links (German)
- \[1\] [Verfassungsbeschwerde von Juli
Zeh](/epass/Verfassungsbeschwerde28012008.pdf/)
- \[2\] [Heidi Klein, Tillmann Höntzsch "Fliegende Wechsel - die
Drehtür
kreist"](http://www.lobbycontrol.de/download/drehtuer-studie.pdf)
- \[3\] [Pressemeldung des CCC vom 20. Juni
2007](/updates/2007/biometrie-unsinn-deluxe)
- \[4\] [Klage des Rechtsanwaltes Michael
Schwarz](/epass/klage-fingerabdruecke.pdf)
- \[5\] [Vortrag auf dem 24c3 "Meine Finger gehören mir - Die nächste
Stufe der biometrischen
Vollerfassung"](http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/24C3/mp4/24c3-2346-de-meine_finger_gehoeren_mir-COMPATIBLE.mp4)
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