Communist Vietnam’s amended 2023 Law on Identification, which comes into effect on July 1, will mandate iris scans, fingerprints, and facial images as biometric data to be collected and stored for the registration of Vietnamese identity cards.
According to Le Tan Toi, Vietnam’s chairman of the National Defense and Security Committee, an individual’s iris does not change over time and is a better basis for identity verification than other characteristics, like fingerprints, that may be damaged or altered.
Based on the amended law, government authorities will have the ability to key in citizens’ biometric details, including records of blood type, into the national population database under the management of the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the national police force.
Moreover, the new law stipulates that Vietnamese police can start the voluntary collection of DNA information and voice samples of citizens from age 14 for use in Vietnam’s new identification system.
Currently police are required to collect only citizens’ fingerprints and facial images when the latter are registering new identity cards. However, as per the amended law, the MPS will now encrypt and store citizens’ information in the chip-based identity cards, which the authorities began issuing to all citizens in 2022.
The revised law will also empower criminal investigation agencies to gather the biometric data of people of interest to them. Vietnam’s MPS will exclusively develop and manage the country’s population database.
Critics of the amended law, who include some lawmakers in the Vietnamese National Assembly, voiced their fears over risks of privacy and potential data violations after authorities announced their plan to gather and store citizens’ sensitive personal data. As iris scans and DNA samples are unique to individual citizens, the police force in communist Vietnam could use these details for surveillance purposes.
Additionally, cybercriminals could use biometric data for identity theft and other related crimes.
Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told TechRadar in 2023 that “all recorded data is hackable… [B]iometric information is a valuable target for cybercriminals, and hacking of this type of data becomes a popular way of identity theft.”
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