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Wednesday 26 March 2008 8:01 PM
Less than 24 hours before Heathrow's new Terminal 5 is due to open, airport owner BAA has suspended plans to use fingerprinting to keep track of passengers in the airport.The UK's data protection watchdog has said that the plan to fingerprint all passengers (regardless of what country they are from) may be a breach of UK law. Under the plans, passengers checking in would have their fingerprints scanned and stored. At the gate before boarding the plane, the fingerprints would be scanned again to ensure that the person trying to board the plane is the same person who checked in. The rationale for the plans is that a person arriving on an international flight will not be able to swap boarding cards with an domestic passenger and gain access to the UK without being checked by immigration. The Data Protection registrar has said that it cannot see why photographs cannot be used instead - although other parties have said that this could lead to confusion or terrorists still being able to get through. BAA have said that the fingerprint data is destroyed within 24 hours inline with data protection guidelines.
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