International passports now contain fingerprints in Russia

Now images of papillary patterns of two fingers will be stored in international passports of Russians. The corresponding Federal Law "On Amendments to the Federal Law "On the Exit Procedure from the Russian Federation and Entry into the Russian Federation" was signed by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The law was adopted on December 13 and approved by the Federation Council on December 18, 2013.

This law is aimed at improving the legislation in regards to increase the passport protection of the Russian Federation citizen proving his identity outside the country.

For this purposes the existing legislation is amended to provide that additional biometric data of a passport holder are entered on the electronic media of the passport.

In this case according to the law, the data obtained by scanning the papillary patterns are stored only on electronic media contained in the passport, and after issuing it to a citizen of the Russian Federation are deleted from the respective information systems.