[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-87

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030428/asp/opinion/story_1917873.asp

The Telegraph  	
  Monday, April 28, 2003 |

IDENTIFICATION OVERDRIVE
- DOCUMENT
Extracts from Privacy and Human Rights 2002, by the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, Washington DC, and Privacy International, London

There was considerable discussion in the United States of America in
introducing ...a national identity card scheme but no formal policy
was introduced. Meanwhile noncitizens may already be tracked at border
entry points and as they move within the country. A system called
student and exchange visitor information system keeps track of foreign
students to ensure that they are still registered and maintains a log
of their addresses.

The United Kingdom is proposing the implementation of "entitlement
cards" in an effort to deal with immigration and illegal work,
identity theft, but also supported by the fight against terrorism.
Similarly, Hong Kong is planning to introduce a biometric chip
identity card to verify fingerprints to authenticate travellers into
China.

None of the above trends are necessarily new; the novelty is the speed
with which these policies gained acceptance, and in many cases, became
law.

ID cards are in use in one form or another in virtually all countries
of the world. The type of card, its functions, and integrity vary
enormously. While a number of countries have official, compulsory,
national ID cards that are used for a variety of purposes, many
countries do not. These include Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New
Zealand, the US and the Nordic countries. Those that do have such a
card include Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong,
Malaysia, and South Africa.

Nationwide ID systems are established for a variety of reasons. Race,
politics and religion often drive the deployment of ID cards. The fear
of insurgence, religious differences, immigration, or political
extremism have been all too common motivators for the establishment of
ID systems that aim to force undesirables in a state to register with
the government, or make them vulnerable in the open without proper
documents.

In recent years technology has rapidly evolved to enable electronic
record creation and the construction of large commercial and state
databases. A national identifier contained in an ID card enables
disparate information about a person that is stored in different
databases to be easily linked and analyzed through data mining
techniques. ID cards are also becoming "smarter" — the technology to
build microprocessors the size of postage stamps and put them on
wallet sized cards has become more affordable.

This technology enables multiple applications such as a credit card,
library card, health care card, driver's licence and government
benefit programme information to be all stored on the same national ID
along with a password or a biometric identifier. Governments in
Finland, Malaysia, and Singapore have experimented with such "Smart"
ID cards. In July 2002, the Labor government in the United Kingdom
launched a six-month public consultation process on whether the United
Kingdom should adopt an "entitlem-ent card" with similar features.

Critics contend that such cards, especially when combined with
information contained in databases, enable intrusive profiling of
individuals and create a misplaced reliance on a single document,
which enables precisely the type of fraud the cards are meant to
eliminate.

In a number of countries, these systems have been successfully
challenged on constitutional privacy grounds. In 1998, the Philippine
Supreme Court ruled that a national ID system violated the
constitutional right to privacy.