What's unclear to me here is this: under this new scheme does the USA get access to the biometric data of people not travelling to the USA?
What's unclear to me here is this: under this new scheme does the USA get access to the biometric data of people not travelling to the USA?
From the analysis linked in TFA:
"The automated query can be based on: * Identity information included in the application or in travel documents, such as name, date of birth, national ID number, and/or * the fingerprint of an individual."
Sounds like they could send requests to that computer system just based on publicly available information on a person like name and date of birth, even if the person never applied for a visa or tried to enter the US.
Well, a national ID number isnt usually publicly available info, even if it can be obtained by the US government through illicit means.
But yeah, it does sound that way, but certainly not clear cut to me what the situation is. I.e. does the agreement involve clauses about what to do if this is abused? Do we have a way to detect if theyre using this on non-travellers? Etc.
> a national ID number isnt usually publicly available info
A couple of counterexamples:
Italy's "fiscal code" is generated with a simple algorithm which can be executed manually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fiscal_code
Sweden's "personal identity number" is public information and can be looked up by anyone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed...
Belgian National Number is your birth date, then an increment from 1 to 999 for every baby born that day, then a base-97 checksum.
Not sure if still the case: odd numbers for males and even numbers for females.
This also means a person’s Belgian RRN can change.
Yep, but they do not change on sex change, IIRC.
I wrote a system for a medical lab decades ago and IIRC I did actually have to change some RRN's manually. It's been a while so I'm not 100% sure, but I do think the changes were due to switching gender.
This is the leaked draft: https://statewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/wk_5183_20...
It's not clear how it is supposed to work in detail. But it sounds like it could be implemented in a way that makes illegitimate queries possible. It doesn't sound like they want to really ensure that you can catch those.
In multiple European countries, national ID numbers are public information that can be searched by name and address (i.e. Sweden)
I played with Estonia’s e-residency and they use asymmetric cryptography for everything so the ID is public but does nothing without the corresponding private key.
Only the people who travel to the US should be included in this farce and vice versa the other way…
It changes the nature of the scheme quite a bit