Law note · Azerbaijan
Law on Personal Data, biometric data enumeration and general processing conditions
What it requires
- An app that captures or stores a facial image, voiceprint (sound fragment and its acoustic parameters in the Act's own term), or other biometric identifier from a person in Azerbaijan is still bound by this Act's ordinary processing conditions, a lawful basis under Art. 9.6 and destruction under Art. 9.4 once the purpose is achieved, even though Azerbaijan does not treat biometric data as a heightened special category and imposes no biometric-specific consent, retention, or storage-technology duty.
When LexLint raises it
processes_biometricsprocesses_voice
- Excludes recording-derived identifiers
- No
What we found
Art. 9.5 enumerates biometric data in detail: fingerprints and palm prints, facial image, iris and retina of the eye, sound fragment and its acoustic parameters, DNA, body-measurement results, description of special features and physical defects of the body, handwriting, signature, and other biometric data, and states that the Act's general processing conditions (Art. 9.1-9.6) are fully applicable to it.
This is a deliberate, textually confirmed choice: biometric data is not elevated to the heightened special-categories regime of Art. 9.7 that governs race, health, and similar categories elsewhere in this same Act, so there is no biometric-specific explicit-consent requirement, no dedicated retention or destruction duty, and no dedicated storage-technology requirement anywhere in this Act.
A service may create and store a voiceprint (the Act's own term is sound fragment and its acoustic parameters) or a faceprint on whatever general basis Art. 9.6 supplies for any other personal data, most plausibly consent for an open category or a legislative basis, and must destroy it only under the Act's general Art. 9.4 duty to destroy data without delay once its processing purpose has been achieved.
A reader should not infer from this instrument's law_family or flags_on alone that Azerbaijan treats biometric data the way this batch's other jurisdictions do; the Act plainly reaches voice and face identifiers, just not as a sensitive category.