Israel: Interior Minister foresees mandatory biometric ID

Erdan wants advanced biometric ID card mandatory for all Israelis (Jerusalem Post)

All citizens will have to gradually move to biometric identification, Interior Minister Gilad Erdan said Monday, submitting a report on the system’s pilot run to the cabinet and Knesset.

“Smart biometric documentation that cannot be counterfeited, together with use of the biometric data will allow a full security and defense package for Israeli citizens’ identities and will balance our responsibility to ensure their security with our requirement to defend their privacy,” Erdan stated.

Obviously, his stance isn't universally popular, but read the whole thing. There are a lot of good bits of information there including this one: Israel is the OECD country with the most counterfeited passports.

Turks ready themselves for new ID regime

Turks embrace biometric data for new ID card system (TMC - Cloud Computing)

Next month's roll-out of a compulsory biometric system will end the present different-colored card system – pink for women and blue for men – which Turks have been using for almost 40 years.

While many countries today do not require their citizens to carry ID cards, for Turkey this is just the latest evolution of a well-established identity system. The first Turkish IDs were issued in 1882 and contained essential details such as height, eye color – or whether men wore mustache or beard.

Next month's change takes place against a backdrop of much more modern concerns. As society becomes more conscious about identity theft and hacking, the new cards have created a debate about the security of storing personal data.

Turkey looks to biometrics to enable structural change

Upcoming reforms in Turkey to ban any actions against statehood (Trend)

UPDATE:
Via twitter, @canmutlu writes that the article linked above refers to biometric national ID cards rather than (as the article states, twice) passports.

This rings true from a practical standpoint, and based upon this short article from Planet Biometrics: Turkey’s PM unveils biometric ID card plan.

We very much appreciate his pointing this out.

UPDATE II:
It looks like someone at Trend got the message, as well.

New biometric identity cards to be issued in Turkey (Trend)

Waiting for the kitchen sink

Biometric Smart ID Cards: Dumb Idea — Every anti-biometrics argument in one convenient resource, including NO2ID, and the horribly mischaracterized Israel "biometrics" data breach.

Policy must precede technology

Some Ugandans may miss identity cards (New Vision)

In Mengo and Kisenyi suburbs, many non-indigenous Ugandans yesterday expressed disappointment when officials at the distribution centres demanded proof showing that they were registered Ugandans.

This group included Salim Uhuru, the NRM chairman of Kampala district and councillor of Kisenyi, who has since described the development as discrimination.

“When I reached the distribution table, I was told that I was not supposed to get the identity card. My name and photograph were in the register, but were marked ‘non-citizen’. I also noticed that this was the same case with every other person who was light skinned. This smells of discrimination of fellow countrymen on grounds of their skin colour,” he said.

The title of this post is a variation on the theme that technology is no substitute for managerial skill and wise policies (see here for similar thoughts). It looks like Uganda has some work to do in its ID management infrastructure as it seems that in important parts of the bureaucracy, no one is quite sure what a Ugandan is.

See also:
Poor ID Management Infrastructure Prevents Uganda Little League Baseball Team from World Series Participation

It's obvious that Uganda has more than a fair helping of ID management challenges. The good news is that it has never been easier to overcome technical challenges. The bad news is that technology can't force a consensus on who should get an ID.

An Emirati view of national ID

UAE ID programme model for the world, security experts say (The National)

The Emirates Identity programme was established by virtue of a federal decree in 2004.

The national ID card has the cardholder's name, nationality, gender and date of birth on it. The card also bears a unique 15-digit identification number, which is used for identity verification by the Government and private entities. Inside the card is an electronic chip that contains personal and biometric data about the cardholder.

The UAE is advanced in its application of biometrics to national ID. The article sheds some light on why that is the case.

Libya ponders national ID as an instrument of economic development

Libya takes steps to fight corruption (Foreign Policy - Reg. req.)

Libya's General National Congress (GNC) is debating the newly introduced transparency and anti-corruption bill which they expect to vote on in the next few weeks. The Libyan government, led by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, is taking practical steps toward fighting corruption and improving transparency in public institutions, following alarming reports of rampant corruption and financial waste in the public sector. These steps are also driven by huge public demand for immediate anti-corruption measures and transparency in post-revolution Libya.

On February 7, the government announced the National Identification Numbers (NID) project. By giving each person a unique number, the government will be able make sure that transfers and payments are going to the right people and avoid manipulations to the system.

It's hard to help people if you can't identify them.

Who would handle the verification end of a US biometric ID system?

Bruce Kennedy at MSN Money does a good job documenting some challenges associated with a national biometric ID in the United States in Should the US have a national biometric ID card?

Appropriately, cost, culture and the mechanics of a possible future system are addressed.
But because biometric enrollment without biometric verification is a half-measure, the thing that really caught my eye was the part about how the verification end of a theoretical future biometric ID system might work.

Should a biometric ID card become a reality, Haag envisions a new micro-market emerging, of companies creating portable employee-verificatio​n systems that would offer their services to other businesses. "Something along the lines of...these trucks driving around now that do all the shredding that guarantee all of your sensitive documents will be 100% shredded," he says. "I think it would be cost-prohibitive for small business to acquire and maintain the hardware and the software necessary to do it themselves."

Haag's vision of mobile verification is interesting. We've touched on two other possibilities, neither of which depends strictly upon a national system, in the past in:

The Post Office, Identity Assurance & Biometrics
ID Entrepreneurs: Criminal Background Checks

If you only have time for one of the two, the Post Office one is the way to go.

Philippines moves closer to biometric national ID

National ID system hurdles 2nd reading (ABS-CBN News)

The proposed "Filipino Identification System Act" aims to reduce red tape in government, Bichara said.

"The bill will reduce costs and lessen the financial burden on both the government and the public brought about by the use of multiple ID cards and maintenance of redundant databases containing the same or related information," he added.

UAE: The World's most complete ID management laboratory

Emirates ID has world’s largest integrated biometrics (Go Dubai News)

Dr. Al Khouri added “providing a comprehensive database of inhabitants’ fingerprints, will contribute and support projects related to Emirates national vision 2021, aimed at enhancing the security and advancement of society, as well as supporting e-government projects through authenticating personal identity in e-transactions conducted over the Internet, thus contributing to hindering the risk of identity theft that increases day by day worldwide. This criminal behavior caused losses estimated at hundreds of billions of Dirhams.

He explained that the Authority succeeded in this achievement, as a result of the reengineering of registration procedures and the improving of electronic infrastructure, through the use of modern and high quality electronic hardware and software specialized in capturing high quality fingerprints.

Fiji: Biometric Voter ID Being Used for all Sorts of Transactions

It's like UID in reverse.

Ministry to accept voter cards as valid ID (Fiji Times)

THE Voter Identification Cards (VIC) issued through the electronic voter registration identification cards will be accepted as a valid form of identification by the Ministry of Justice by November 15.

Any Fijian who has registered to vote and who possesses a VIC will be able to access services provided by the Registrar of Titles Office, the Births, Deaths & Marriages Registry, the Companies Office (which includes the Moneylenders Registry) and the Official Receiver's Office.

Read the whole thing. You're half-way there already. By calling it UID in reverse I make no comparison between Fiji & India. Fiji has less than a million people and you can't walk there from anywhere else. It's just that, rather than develop one ID that can do everything. Fiji developed an ID for one purpose (elections) that has broad applicability to other ID tasks.

Fiji

Israel High Court of Justice on Biometric Database Pilot

Hight Court: Biometric database should be changed (Jerusalem Post)

The petitioners said the ministry should examine whether a central database was in fact needed and whether there were other options that could prevent data leaks or information theft.

Though the court rejected the petition as premature because the pilot has not yet run, Justices Miriam Naor, Hanan Melcer and Isaac Amit also accepted the petitioners’ arguments that the state must rework its planned pilot of the program to evaluate whether it is necessary to store the population’s biometric data in a single, centralized database.

The Interior Ministry has been planning for years to replace existing ID cards with ones containing biometric data, and in 2009, the Knesset approved the biometric data law that allowed the initiative to move forward.

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.

Nepal Preparing for Biometric National ID Card

They have a cool flag, too.

Source: CIA World Factbook - Nepal

  Ordinance must for national ID project - Official says other preparations on track (The Himalayan Times)

The report recommends polycarbonated cards for the NID and suggests improving the quality of finger prints that the Election Commission has collected, noting that the prints are of low quality and do not meet the standard for biometric ID cards. An NID card is estimated to cost six to eight dollars.

“After the detailed project report, the consultant is preparing bid documents for the project,” Dahal said.

He anticipated that this process will take a long time to complete.

Refugees, National ID, Immigration and Biometrics

Which country has the largest number of individual asylum seekers in the world?

It's South Africa.

South Africa is using biometrics for several ID management tasks: a population register, immigration and refugees. The synergies in integrating these three systems are obvious and might be extended to include South African welfare programs.

Smart ID cards use microchips that store biometric and other information that can be checked against databases. They are difficult to forge.

Special scanners “read” the bearer’s thumbprint and if it does not match that on the database, officials are alerted by the system.

Dlamini Zuma said the cards were key to a national identity system that would replace the present multiple systems used to manage the registration of births, marriages and deaths, and immigration data.

It would allow the biometric and biographical details of foreigners and South Africans to be digitally captured and stored in a single integrated system linked to those managing asylum seekers and refugees.

See also:
New ID smart card will be ‘no dompas’ (Business Day - S. Africa)

Privacy and Security in Israel

The debate about the future of Israel's nationwide ID management system is really heating up. The future system will include biometrics. The article deals with how the pilot system is to be organized and distributed and how the information is to be stored.

I've really undersold the article, here. There are some fireworks in there (the adverbs especially) as well as links to other news items about the topic.

How vulnerable will Israel's future biometric database be? (ynet News)

What's your number?

Jamaica to get national identification system (Jamaica Gleaner)

It is believed that the benefits of the NIDS will be significant for Jamaica, both in the public and private sectors, including registration of births and deaths, criminal records, traffic ticketing, tax compliance, records management, road and drivers licensing, among other things.

The article doesn't specify the biometric modality (modalities) to be included, but it does mention tha biometrics will be used.

South Africa audits old biometric data with new technology

Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and its Home Affairs National Identification System (ITWeb.co.za)

The department identified 598 000 instances of duplicate IDs. It has now resolved 412 096 cases where one person had multiple ID numbers and 20 971 cases where multiple persons shared one ID number.

Applying new identity management techniques to existing systems and databases can yield impressive results leading to a significant return on investment.

It's also interesting to compare the number of "extra" ID numbers generated to the number of people that were issued someone else's number in error.

There were more than 28 instances of extra ID numbers issued to people for every instance of assigning the same ID number to multiple people.

There are many reasons for this including simple error. If two people have the same ID number, someone is likely to become inconvenienced and bring the matter to the attention of the authorities. If someone loses their child's documents, they may just start the ID process over again, getting a new number and the old number never gets used. So innocent errors of one type (people sharing an ID number) are far more likely to be corrected than the other type (more numbers than people).

Another reason for the difference in the quantity of each type of error, however, is fraud. The ghost worker fraud depends upon creating extra ID's for people that don't exist and then either hiring them to work for some publicly funded entity or enrolling them to collect some sort of social welfare benefit.

I suspect that the bigger part of the difference in observed database error rates is fraud.

India is generating approx One million ID numbers per day

Nearly half the Indian population will get their unique identity number by 2014 (NewKerala.cim)

"We will generate about a million numbers per day and our plan is to have nearly half the population in our system (unique identity number) by 2014," Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said.

According to Nilekani, the uniue number will provide its holder access to better government services, while greatly reducing the hassels of paperwork.

We've written extensively about India's UID project, calling it the identity management "moon shot" and expounding on the connection between a unique individual identity and socio-economic development.

More posts on India

Indian firm to launch 'Bank on Bike' for financial inclusion

SBBJ to launch 'Bank on Bike' for financial inclusion (EconomicTimes.com)

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur , a subsidiary of State Bank of India (SBI), is planning to launch Bank on Bike initiative to bring unbanked rural population of Rajasthan under the banking net. This initiative is a part of the financial inclusion plan of the central government to cover all villages with 2,000 and above population

One of the hoped-for benefits of India's UID project is the an extension of the benefits provided by modern institutions to poor citizens.