Canada is eyeing greatly expanded sharing of immigration information — such as fingerprints of visa applicants — with not only the United States but other key allies. An internal memo prepared for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander says the government is building an information technology system that could be used for the systematic exchange of biometric data with Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

"Systematic sharing is preferable to manual case-by-case sharing because it can generate faster responses and be done at higher volumes," says the briefing memo, obtained under the Access to information Act.

The Canadian federal government is already pursuing wide-scale sharing of immigration information with the United States under the highly publicized perimeter security pact. Beginning this year, the fingerprints of visa applicants to Canada from more than two dozen countries will be checked against a U.S. database that includes the prints of immigration violators, criminals, and known or suspected terrorists.

The federal privacy commissioner has expressed concerns about high-volume, routine information sharing with other countries, saying it may be impossible to control what happens to that data once sent abroad. The government says such data-sharing is essential to fight fraud and abuse of Canada’s immigration system.

Biometric information — unique identifiers such as an iris scan or a fingerprint record — is considered especially useful. Lately there has been intense scrutiny of Canada’s security relationship with its closest allies — collectively known as the Five Eyes […]