“…in cases in which there is a potential prison sentence of a year or more, authorities will have permission to access the fingerprint databases for criminal matches, with Sweden’s containing about 165,000 such records, and the FBI in possession of about 100 million.”
Police authorities in the US and Sweden will soon be able to search through each other’s fingerprint databases for investigations.
As The Local reports, the countries first agreed to such an idea back in 2011, but it’s only with the parliamentary passage of new legislation in Sweden that such a program has officially received the green light. It means that in cases in which there is a potential prison sentence of a year or more, authorities will have permission to access the fingerprint databases for criminal matches, with Sweden’s containing about 165,000 such records, and the FBI in possession of about 100 million.
Sweden’s Left Party opposed the legislation, citing privacy concerns, but was outvoted. Sweden has similar agreements in place with other European Union countries, but the US operates under a different regulatory regime, and the FBI has faced accusations of malfeasance in its biometric identification practices.
The shared investigative capabilities are expected to come into effect after this summer.
Source: The Local
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June 23, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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