From a government perspective, we proceeded very cautiously in terms of the issue of privacy. By and large, I think those who witnessed at and came to committee expressed a similar concern of the government. To be quite honest, I can't think of a witness who didn't support the biometrics as a part of this bill and as part of moving forward.
The difficulty with this amendment is twofold. First, it actually waters down the biometric provisions in and of themselves. Second, and probably most importantly, by specifying that biometrics are to be collected to verify identity only, it actually prevents the government from doing what is one of the most important purposes of this part of the legislation, and that is to check for criminal background. So the amendment actually waters down entirely the purpose of the biometrics.
Let's not forget that this is our step into the process moving forward, and the government has approached this in a very responsible manner. If we're going to move an amendment that actually doesn't allow the government to do background.... I'll ask government officials to comment on this to verify that what I am saying is correct, in that the ability to only verify identity and to not be able to do a criminal background check prevents a very important part of the biometrics provision, because that is in fact one of the major reasons we want to move this forward.
I would ask the officials to comment.