The need for a global consideration of the human rights implications of biometrics
Reply to Recommendation
| Doc. 12837
| 23 January 2012
- Author(s):
- Committee of Ministers
- Origin
- Adopted
at the 1131st meeting of the Ministers’
Deputies (18 January 2012). 2012 - First part-session
- Reply to Recommendation
- : Recommendation 1960
(2011)
- Thesaurus
1. The Committee of Ministers has studied
Parliamentary Assembly
Recommendation
1960 (2011) on “The need for a global consideration of the human
rights implications of biometrics” with interest. It has communicated
it to the European Committee on Legal Co-operation (CDCJ), the Consultative
Committee of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with
regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (ETS No. 108) (T-PD),
the Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI) and the Steering Committee
for Human Rights (CDDH), for information and possible comments.
The comments received have been taken into account in the elaboration
of the present reply.
2. The Committee of Ministers is pleased to inform the Parliamentary
Assembly that the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with
regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (ETS No. 108) is
being modernised (paragraph 2.1 of the Assembly recommendation).
In March 2010, the Ministers' Deputies endorsed this work, which
has as one of its main objectives to examine the impact of new technologies
on the protection of personal data, and covers the implications
of biometrics. It should for instance be noted that the consultation
document which was published on the occasion of Data Protection
Day (28 January) and was intended to allow all key players in data
protection to present their opinions on what the modernisation exercise should
include, made explicit reference to biometric data. Like the Parliamentary
Assembly, the Committee of Ministers considers that it would be
useful if consideration was given in this context to the definition
of “biometric data”.
3. The Committee of Ministers notes also that the T-PD will review
the Progress Report on the implementation of Convention No. 108’s
principles on the collection and processing of biometric data, which dates
from 2005, as well as its Recommendation Rec(97)5 on the protection
of medical data. It should be added that the T-PD also takes the
implications of biometrics into consideration in its current work
on the revision of Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation Rec(89)2
on the protection of personal data used for employment purposes.
4. The Parliamentary Assembly also recommends that guidelines
be prepared for member States on legislative frameworks that would
strike a fair balance between the interests of the parties concerned,
including those of security and privacy. The Committee of Ministers
shares the view of the Parliamentary Assembly on the need for a
legislative framework to regulate the use of biometric data in order
to guarantee the protection of an individual’s right to privacy
and to prevent the misuse of his or her personal data. It proposes
that the T-PD considers the feasibility of integrating a regulatory
perspective to its work on biometric data, thereby possibly widening
the scope of the legal instrument prepared in the framework of the
review of Recommendation Rec(97)5 on the protection of medical data,
to encompass biometric data.
5. The Committee of Ministers agrees that the Council of Europe
should continue to observe the development of biometric technology
and its possible impact on the rights and freedoms enshrined in
the European Convention on Human Rights and other Council of Europe
instruments in the human rights field. The Assembly’s concerns regarding
the development of biometric technologies, the applications of which
are very diverse involving, among others, electronics, computer
science, statistics as well as biology and medicine, are shared
by the Committee of Ministers. These developments constitute challenges
with respect to data protection and the wider issue of privacy.
They are also raising ethical concerns with regard to the protection of
human dignity and integrity. The challenges are not with the technologies
per se but with the way they are applied and how the resulting data
are processed, in particular sensitive data such as health related
data, including genetic data, which may have been obtained initially
for different purposes such as clinical or research purposes.
6. The Committee of Ministers refers in this context to the Additional
Protocol to the Oviedo Convention
Note concerning
Genetic Testing for Health Purposes and to its Recommendation Rec(2006)4
on Research on Biological Materials of Human Origin, covering also
DNA collections. During the elaboration of these instruments, the
sensitivity of the genetic and other health related data and the
possible implications of their re-use for other purposes or linkage
between databases, was underlined. The Committee notes, furthermore, that
in the framework of the Oviedo Convention, the CDBI is currently
addressing ethical issues raised by the use of genetic data in the
field of insurance.
7. The Committee of Ministers considers that, given the potential
interaction and impact of biometric technologies at a global level,
co-operation with the UN, the OECD and the European Union is important,
in particular with a view to promoting consistency between normative
texts (paragraph 3 of the Assembly recommendation). It wishes to
underline that fruitful co-operation is already in place in the
field of bioethics. Finally, the Committee of Ministers recalls
that the Oviedo Convention is open for signature by non-member States
to the Council of Europe which have participated in its elaboration
and by the European Union (Article 33). The Committee would welcome
further signatures and ratifications. It notes that other non-member
States may be invited to accede to the Convention (Article 34).
For this, they need to make a request to be considered by the Committee
of Ministers.
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