Russia wants to collect biometric data of convicts without their consent

The Russian government wants to collect biometric data of convicts without their consent. For this purpose, the Ministry of Justice has developed a draft amendment on the processing of biometric personal data of convicts, suspects and accused persons without their consent.

It is expected, these amendments will be introduced into the Russian major legal acts including Criminal Executive Code, the law “On institutions and bodies of the criminal executive system” and some others.

The Ministry of Justice – the main initiator of the amendments — in its explanatory note said that in accordance with the concept of the development of the Russian penal system until 2030, its digital transformation in all areas of activity, which involves mandatory collection of biometrics data remains one of the most important directions for the state agency.

The existing Russian federal law “On Personal Data” contains a list of cases when the processing of biometric personal data can be carried out without consent of a person: implementation of international treaties on readmission (administrative expulsion), by court decision, mandatory state fingerprinting and some others.

As part of state plans, the collection of biometric data from convicted or suspected persons will help to improve crime detection rate including those of past years and will allow to better differentiate such people within the Russian jails and other penal institutions. The latter will be important to ensure better safety of prisoners and will help to isolate people with infectious or especially dangerous diseases (AIDS in the active phase, tuberculosis, etc.) from each other.

In the meantime, some Russian lawyers have already expressed fears that mandatory collection of biometric data of at least suspected persons without their consent could be considered as violation of their rights. Previous plans to collect biometrics drew a warning from the Russian Orthodox Church that citizens have an “unconditional right” to refuse participation.

According to them, the latest initiative may cause controversy about the creation of digital GULAG (which is a reference to the system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, established by Stalin during the 1930s) in Russia. This is especially sensitive for Russians, given their traditional distrust to biometric technologies in due to a high threat of their leakage and unauthorized access by both scammers, various law agents and recruiters to the Russian army

Artem Evseev, head of the intellectual property, IT and information protection practice at Russian law firm Savina Legal told Russian business paper Vedomosti in an interview that the newly designed bill does not actually offer mechanisms for protection against leaks or misuse of collected biometric data, which is an extremely important aspect in the context of constant cyber threats.

As he also added the lack of clear guarantees of data security and oversight of their use can lead to significant consequences for the rights of people, especially in cases where biometric data are used outside the framework of the Russian Penal system.

It is currently unclear which company will be responsible for the development of biometric base and technologies for the project and will be probably selected by December of the current year.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometric enrollment  |  biometric identifiers  |  biometrics  |  data collection  |  prisons  |  Russia