Foreign Minister Francis Fonseca has returned from Washington DC where he participated in a flurry of meetings since Monday. Those meetings included sessions with the Foreign Minister of Guatemala, the Secretary General of the OAS, senior US Congressmen, and officials of the Trump Administration.
While there is still no meeting with his US counterpart Secretary of State Marco Rubio, yesterday Fonseca meet with the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem signed what is called "a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Government of Belize and the Government of the United States of America on Enhancing Border Security and Public Safety Cooperation through the Exchange of Information."
So what is included in that information? A post from the US Embassy in Belize says, quote, "the memo lays groundwork for a Biometric Data Sharing Partnership to help Belize develop new border management tools to combat illegal immigration and transnational criminal organizations." End quote.
The prospect of sharing biometric data at the sovereign level and the implications it can have for mass surveillance and personal privacy has aroused some public wariness in Belize - and we'll be asking the Minister about it at our next encounter.
