Friday, June 8, 2012

National Biometric ID Management in Pakistan

UPDATE: ORIGINAL TITLE HAD "PALISTAN." MY APOLOGIES. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAKISTAN.

Pakistan's experience with identity management (BBC)
Pakistan's experience with identity management dates back to 1973, when the eastern part of the country had just seceded and questions were being raised over who was a Pakistani and who was not.

So a registration act was introduced in the parliament to create an authority that would register Pakistani citizens and issue them with a photo ID.

In 2001, this authority was merged with a national database organisation to create Nadra, with the task of computerising all citizen data.

In 2007, Nadra introduced what is known as the multi-biometric system, consisting of finger identification and facial identification data that was to be included in the citizen's computer profile.

"By now, Nadra has issued 91 million computer generated cards, which is 96% of the entire adult population," says Nadra deputy chairman Tariq Malik.

"This is one of the world's largest national databases."
This is only a taste of the article which is full of interesting information.