Phuket police struggle to identify dead foreigner

[Maestro]

The chip in my Swiss passport has a copy of the prints of my two index fingers. If Thai immigration does not store this information in their database, why don't they?

In the case of this dead foreigner, it would certainly help to identify him if immigration had a copy of the data on his passport chip. Has the local police even thought about that?

Would you want Thai immigration, or any immigration for that matter, to store that information in their database?

I have no say in what immigration officers do with the data on the chip if they have the equipment to read it and the skill to use the equipment. I simply thought that the whole idea of having these data on the chip was for immigration officers of the countries to which I travel to use them for identification purposes but for all I know I may be wrong. Still, what other purpose could they possibly serve?

A more recent post, by Badbanker, suggests that Thai immigration is currently not yet reading the chips:

At the moment biometric identification is not in place, however it is planned along with fingerprinting.

...

Therefore, if and when Thailand gets around to implementing the above plan, police should have it much easier to identify dead bodies of foreigners.