“A well-respected nonprofit organization promoting IT in the private and public sectors in Germany has criticized a government plan to sell personal data to finance the country’s new biometric passports.

“The combination of the name and address with biometric information could lead to analysis and surveillance possibilities that are no longer transparent,” the Gesellschaft fuer Informatik e.V. (GI) warned Tuesday in a statement.

The organization heaped criticism on German parliamentarians, who have been debating whether to sell data access to private sector companies to help fund new passports containing additional biometric data, planned for 2008.”