Does Paraguay have central repository of its citizens' biometric data

1. How biometrics are collected in Paraguay: police-led enrollment, not a civilian-only registry

Paraguay still relies heavily on the National Police’s Departamento de Identificaciones to enroll fingerprints and other biometrics for national ID and passport processes, and official descriptions of proposed electronic voting systems explicitly state that biometric databases would be “provided by the National Police through their identification departments” to the Electoral Court for use in voter authentication ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Fragmentation: multiple repositories and duplicated records across government uses

Regional industry analysis cautions that Latin American biometric data is typically created and held by several independent government branches over long periods, meaning a single person’s biometrics may be duplicated across repositories rather than consolidated into one national vault — the same pattern has been observed in Paraguay ^[3]. Civil society monitors echo this: digital ID deployments and mobile ID initiatives in Paraguay have proceeded in a context where biometric capture and reuse happen across ministries and platforms without a unified governance framework ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Attempts to centralize or reuse police biometrics for new systems

Proposals and draft bills to integrate biometric checks — for example, to add fingerprint or facial recognition to electronic voting or to tie biometrics to mobile SIM registration — envisioned reuse of the biometric data held by police identification units for other public or private functions, indicating an operational centrality of police-held records even if formal centralization legislation is absent ^{[1] [6]}. Access Now and TEDIC flagged attempts in Congress that would effectively broaden uses for biometric and identity data without adequate safeguards ^{[6] [5]}.

4. Rights groups: calls for legal clarity, safeguards, and transparency

Paraguayan digital-rights NGO TEDIC and international groups have repeatedly warned that Paraguay lacks sufficient data-protection rules surrounding biometric and digital ID systems, urging lawmaking to clarify who controls and can reuse biometric databases, how long records are retained, and how citizens can correct or delete data ^{[4] [5]}. Access Now noted a presidential veto on a bill requiring identity checks for SIM activation but stressed the absence of comprehensive data-protection regulation that would govern biometric repositories if they become centrally used ^[6].

5. What available reporting does not prove — and why that matters

None of the provided sources contains an official government declaration establishing a single, centralized national biometric repository under a civil-registry agency; instead, the evidence points toward police-controlled enrollment and inter-agency sharing or reuse proposals ^{[1] [3]}. This gap matters because legal responsibility, access controls, and oversight differ materially between a single transparently governed national database and a set of agency-held systems with ad hoc sharing arrangements ^{[4] [5]}.

6. Bottom line: operational centrality without transparent legal centralization

In practice, the National Police’s identification departments function as the primary collectors and custodians of Paraguayan biometric enrollments — making them a de facto central source for other public uses ^{[1] [2]} — but sources do not document a legally established, publicly governed single repository that consolidates and controls all citizens’ biometric data under clear statutory safeguards ^{[3] [4]}. Civil-society reporting warns that Paraguay’s current mix of police-led enrollment, cross-use proposals, and weak regulation creates the risks of de facto centralization without the accountability that formal central repositories would require ^{[5] [6]}.