Italy inks fingerprinting agreement with US at G7 summit

Rome, Oct 21 (IANS/AKI) During a G7 summit on the Italian island of Ischia on Friday, Interior Minister Marco Minniti and acting US Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke signed an accord to share their fingerprinting databases, the Interior Ministry stated.

The accord - aimed at rooting out potential extremists posing as asylum seekers - boosts cooperation between the Italian and US governments in preventing and combating crime, said the interior ministry.

The agreement provides for the exchange of fingerprints and allows Italy and the US to create a mechanism by which their national contact points can access data contained in the national fingerprint identification systems, the ministry said.

The aim of the accord is to create a network to check the identity of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees to detect if there are criminals or terrorist suspects among them, the interior ministry statement said.

In case of matching fingerprints, the agreement also allows additional information to be shared on the suspect in connection with specific criminal cases, the statement added.

Minniti and Duke inked the accord on the sidelines of the two-day G7 summit of interior ministers on Ischia which
kicked off on Thursday.

The threat of fresh attacks on the West by foreign fighters fleeing the Islamic State jihadist group's fallen stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria and Iraq was set to dominate the Ischia meeting at which G7 countries and tech
giants agreed to work together to block the dissemination of Islamist extremism over the Internet.

Tech companies that agreed at the G7 to take down extremist content from the web within two hours of being posted included Google, Facebook and Twitter, officials said.