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.

Indian Cabinet to UID, NPR "Play Nice"

Govt asks UIDAI to take Registrar General of India (RGI) data (The Statesman)

Accepting the demand of the Union home minister, Mr P Chidambaram, the government today directed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to consider the biometric data collected by the Registrar General of India (RGI) while issuing the unique ID number.

The decision to direct the UIDAI to accept the National Population Register (NPR) data was taken at today’s meeting of the Union Cabinet. Mr Chidambaram had taken up the issue with the Prime Minister last week and complained that the UIDAI chief, Mr Nandan Nilekani, was not accepting the NPR data for de-duplication and generation of Aadhaar number.

Ghana Wrapping Up Biometric Voter Enrollment

Mop Up Biometric Registration In Eight Regions (Daily Graphic)

He explained that the mop up had become necessary at some of the areas because during the registration, either the kit broke down or there were long periods of shortage of materials, denying a lot of people the chance to register .

He urged qualified applicants in the affected centres who had not yet registered to take note and register, but was quick to caution those who had already registered as voters to avoid registering again, since that would amount to double registration.

Mr Owusu-Parry explained that any such double registration would be detected.

The mop-up will take place this weekend in eight of Ghana's ten regions.

Super-tiny USB Fingerprint reader

World’s Smallest Fingerprint Reader Borders On Adorable (Gizmodo)
Sold by AuthenTec here.

This looks like it might be the same hardware that has been rumored to be a candidate for deployment in the next iPhone.

ID Rivalry Reignites in India

In the Dec. 6, 2011 post, India: How Much Fraud is Acceptable in NPR, UID, we touched on the philosophical differences between NPR and UID and the men behind the two efforts.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram's biggest point has always been that his organization's database, the National Population Register (NPR), is for Indian citizens only with a view toward issuing a citizenship card. His concern is that loose enrollment standards will lead to issuing the citizenship card to non-citizens and doing that exposes India to intolerable security risks.

The UIDAI, led by Nandan Nilekani is more concerned with providing everyone in India with a legitimate identity. The implicit assumption is that in a situation where a significant portion of the population will be unable to prove with scientific precision who they are (because they don't have ID), you're better off getting everyone an ID and then trying to sort things out later.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set the conditions for both efforts to proceed in parallel, sharing tasks and infrastructure (in areas such as de-duplication) when possible, and otherwise staying out of each other's way.

Though he never really seemed to accept the legitimacy of the pro-UID point of view Chidambaram took his medicine on January 24, 2012, in essence proclaiming "Rivalry! What rivalry?" See: UID: Home Ministry Climb-down.

Three days later the truce was sealed. UID would enroll 600 million people in 16 of India's 28 states, and the NPR would issue 600 million credentials elsewhere. See Compromise reached on Biometric ID in India (January 27) which predicted that the rivalry would soon heat up again.

...which brings us to today:
Chidambaram, Nilekani spar over collection of biometric data (Times of India)

Sources said the cabinet again discussed the issue on Thursday after Chidambaram recently wrote to the Prime Minister complaining that the NPR project had "come to a standstill" because of the UID scheme.

"The collection of photographs and biometrics has been facing hurdles at every step on account approach of the UIDAI, which, it seems, has failed to appreciate the core purpose of the National Population Register," Chidambaram said in his letter.

He also slammed the UIDAI for allegedly not following the cabinet's orders.

"Despite clear orders from the cabinet, the UIDAI is objecting to the conduct of NPR camps in certain states and is also refusing to accept the biometric data of NPR for de-duplication and generation of Aadhaar number," he said.

Versions of this article are all over the news today. I chose this one from the Times of India for the quality of the discussion in the comment section.

Of course, all this is highly political. But as we say around here all the time: Biometrics is about people. That applies across the board. It applies to the relationship between the individual and the ID management system, and it applies to the political and managerial people who implement and operate ID management systems.

Politics will always play a part in national biometric deployments and they should. What's interesting in this case is that the political battle isn't between pro- and anti-biometrics forces. It's between two giant biometric deployments and, yes, the people who run them.

UID: Radical Ideas & Real Challenges

Why India's identity scheme is groundbreaking (BBC)

With a unique identity, previously anonymous poor Indians can have access to services such as bank accounts, mobile connections and driving licences.

That is already something, for a country which has a population of 1.2 billion but only 50 million passport-holders and 200 million with driving licenses.

Indians design and build some of the world's most sophisticated software and technologies for multinational corporations.

Now, some of this hi-tech savvy promise to transport India's neglected millions from the technological dark ages, propelling them from complete obscurity to an online identity.

This highly recommended article pulls together a lot of the themes we discuss here.

Mobile Hardware: Future ultrabooks will be equipped with voice recognition, face tracking and touch features, which will secure the laptops and make them easier to use...


US & Canada: Border security blueprint “the next generation of integrated cross-border law enforcement”


Fiji: Electronic voting - an overview of the biometric voter system being implemented in Fiji.


Gambia: Daily Observer: GID: 302,634 Biometric ID Cards issued so far.


Nigeria: Labour and Productivity Minister inaugurates a 10-man panel to resolve outstanding issues on the biometric verification of employees of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.

King County, Washington: AFIS Costs and Benefiets

Voters could decide $118.9 million county levy for fingerprint services (Issaquah Press)

King County voters could decide on a $118.9 million property tax levy to continue funding criminal fingerprint identification services for local law enforcement agencies.

The proposal is to keep the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, in operation through 2018. The system provides criminal fingerprint identification services to law enforcement agencies throughout the county, including the Issaquah Police Department.

The proposed renewal levy rate is 5.92 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, or about $20.72 per year for a $350,000 home. Voters approved the initial AFIS levy in 1986, and overwhelmingly renewed the levy since then, most recently in 2006. The current levy expires in December.

“As a regional crime-fighting tool, AFIS is our ‘CSI: King County,’ bringing new technology to the job of cracking cases and catching criminals,” County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement.

Read the whole thing. There are numbers to indicate that the system is getting cheaper to administer over time. There are other indicators that even as the system is costing less, its capabilities are expanding.

King County contains Seattle (map here).

Unlock Your Phone With Voice Biometrics

Nuance’s Dragon ID lets you unlock your phone by voice (GigaOM)

While typical phone unlocking programs require tapping in a short code or tracing a pattern on screen, Nuance’s technology uses two layers of security: biometrics, which recognizes your unique “voice imprint,” and a password or pass phrase – which in this case is spoken not typed, said Kenneth Harper, Senior Product Manager, Nuance. Nuance has been selling the technology for years to businesses and governments for use in their own biometric security systems – with 20 million voice prints on file – but this is the first time it’s offering up its technology to consumer phones and tablets.

Pretty cool.

Canada Moving Toward Biometric Visitor Visas

Appeal mechanism needed for biometric visa plan due to imperfect system: report (Winnipeg Free Press)

Saying no biometrics system is perfect, an internal report urges the federal government to create an avenue of appeal for visa applicants who are rejected because of a false fingerprint match. The Conservative government is moving toward using biometrics — such as fingerprints, iris scans and other unique identifiers — to vet all foreigners entering the country.

As a first step, it soon plans to require applicants for a visitor visa, study permit or work permit to submit 10 electronic fingerprints and a photo before they arrive in Canada. The prints will be searched against RCMP databanks. Upon arrival the Canada Border Services Agency will use the data to verify that the visa holder is the same person as the applicant.

The big news is that Canada is going biometric with its travel visas.

The author's discussion of appeals and privacy, however, seems a bit overwrought.

Any ID management system, whether it has to do with biometrics or not, must include provisions for sussing out mistakes (appeals) and maintaining the security (privacy) of information.

Biometric systems aren't robots about to take over the Canada Border Services Agency, they're just another tool for them to use and adding a fingerprint to the visa system will, in all likelihood, reduce the number of mistaken identifications and streamline the existing appeals process.

The article continues...

It [the report] says that in addition to false matches, privacy concerns associated with the use of biometric technologies can also include unauthorized use of the information, discrimination through profiling or surveillance, and retention of the data beyond the length of time needed.

To preserve the privacy rights of applicants, the report also recommends:
— those applying for visas be told what information will be collected and how it will be used;
— there be standards as to how long the fingerprints, photos and biographical details are kept and when they should be destroyed;
— memoranda between Citizenship and Immigration and the RCMP and border services agency be reviewed to determine what additional provisions for privacy and security may be needed.

It's not entirely clear that "transparency" rather than "privacy" isn't the proper prism for examining the issues surrounding the information provided by visa applicants.

It's really nice of Canada to be considerate of the sensitivities of visa applicants, to deal with them in a transparent manner, and take thorough decisions regarding data retention, but if someone wants to visit a country that requires them to procure a visa, privacy (ed. between the applicant and the visa issuing country) doesn't really enter into it. They either supply the required information or they don't and those issues come up with or without biometrics.

Biometric Chat on Voice Biometrics June 14

UPDATE June 14, 2012: @m2sys has put a transcript of today's biometric chat up at Storify

When: June 14, 2012

11:00 am EDT, 8:00 am PDT, 16:00 pm BST, 17:00 pm (CEST), 23:00 pm (SGT), 0:00 (JST)

Where: tweetchat.com/room/biometricchat (or Twitter hashtag #biometricchat)

What: Tweet chat on voice biometrics.

Topics: The science behind voice biometric technology, technical challenges, non-telephone-based voice applications, market applications, and customer impact.

More information at the M2SYS blog.

I always enjoy these.

Tune in, dial up, surf over (or do whatever it is you do to navigate the interwebs) and join in the conversation.

More on Biometrics in Hotels

John has a great post about biometrics in hotels at the M2SYS blog. It looks like fingerprint room access is finally becoming a reality.

Use of Biometrics for Hotel Room Access Portends Strong Potential for Market (M2SYS Blog)

Seems that CADD Emirates out of the United Arab Emirates has implemented a hotel patron biometrics identification system that is replacing electronic key cards. The idea is to ditch the infamous electronic swipe cards that we all know so well in place of a biometric fingerprinting system that scans hotel patrons and allows them access to their rooms by placing their finger on a device, presumably attached to the hotel room door (the article didn’t go into a lot of details about the infrastructure of the deployment). The hotel hopes that , “the system will be able to remember guest preferences from hotel-to-hotel in locations across the globe, with information saved against their fingerprints.”

Read the whole thing.

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.

One-Time-Only ID Technologies

Palm vein biometrics for access to mobile phone recharging stations at festivals (Pocket Lint)

New this year is a palm vein reader that will identify you using the pattern of blood vessels just under your skin, saving customers that use the recharging station the hassle of wearing wristbands and showing proof of identity. According to Vodafone, it will even work if your hands are caked in festival mud.

Think of all the ways business keep track of their customers for short periods of time by issuing some sort of token: a bracelet, a hand stamp, a slip of paper with a number on it, or asking for ID for proof of age when they don't really care who you are, etc.

For many of these cases, the business is only interested a relationship between two things, one of which is a person. In this example, the relationship is between a person and the mobile phone they leave recharging while they rush back to the Garden Stage to hear Suzanne Vega sing Tom's Diner. But dry cleaners, coat checks, and valets all do something similar.

In other cases, the business is interested in who can go where or do what so they can administer VIP areas, determine who can use the subway, consume alcohol or see an R rated movie.

Many types of business have processes in place that are at least in part about identity management. It'll be interesting to see if, when and how some of them look to biometrics to make things easier.

UK: Biometrics in Schools - Times have changed

Students will use fingerprint technology to pay for school dinners (This is Somerset)

When students buy food or drink they will be identified by a biometric fingerprint.

A print of the index finger is taken and it is then translated to an alpha numeric number and the image is then discarded. The number generated will be used to charge accounts.

The fingerprint captured is different to system used by the police and instead the system identifies certain points on the finger and turns them into encrypted numbers.

When students make a purchase they simply place their finger on a scanner at the till and the server will show the students name, class and current balance. It is hoped the new high tech system will also reduce the amount of time students spend queuing for their lunch.

It wasn't too long ago when articles on this subject, especially in the UK, followed a very different template.

Well, they're the ones with money... Over-55s pick passwords twice as secure as teenagers' (New Scientist)

UID Back On, Will Finish Enrolments by March 2014

UIDAI will finish all enrolments by March 2014, says deputy director general Anil Khachi (Economic Times)

Once more unto the breach. Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India has told its regional offices to resume Aadhaar enrolments.

It had temporarily ceased all enrolments in January to address safety-related concerns which had been voiced by, among others, the home ministry. Close to five months down the line, Anil Khachi, a deputy director general with the UIDAI who looks after enrolments told ET that the new system is now ready for rollout. And that UIDAI will finish all enrolments by March 2014.

There's a lot of good updated information at the link.

In other UID news...
Pune Municipal Corporation waits for machines to start 2nd phase of Aadhar (Times of India)
The second phase of Aadhaar enrolment in Chandigarh region was launched (Daily Pioneer)

Nigeria Continues to Develop its ID Infrastructure.

A State that desires to deliver the benefits to society that all modern people have come to require of it*, will find things vastly simpler with an effective ID infrastructure. Biometrics are a cheap and effective way of building that infrastructure and are a true leap-frogging technology.

Here's another indication that Nigeria is taking advantage of biometrics as to build a modern identity infrastructure. This article is about the banking and finance sector, an important piece of the development puzzle to be sure.

Bank Customers to Face Biometric Verification (This Day)

According to the CBN, the activities and processes of customers’ due diligence that financial institutions must perform to identify their customers, among others, remain key to the development of the financial system.

It also regretted that: “Verification of customers’ identity has been very difficult in Nigeria because the identity environment is fraught with adverse and disparate types of identity systems, all running in silos and having no link, integration or standardisation nor a centralised identity database for verifying the identity of bank customers.

“The absence of a central standardised identity database, and the relevant infrastructure to support access to this database, for the verification and authentication of identity, have had a constraining effect on the country’s growth and development, effective credit administration, effective administration of most government services and collation of accurate data and statistics that could be leveraged on to drive effective planning, both in the public and private sectors.”

The extremely frank and technical discussion at the end of the article — what it all means, why Nigeria is where it is, the costs of the status quo, and the opportunities do be derived from a more effective ID management environment — is really good stuff. You don't see it laid out like that too often in the mainstream press.


*National defense, basic education, vaccination programs, enforceable private contracts, well regulated public utilities, etc. Basically, it's just really hard for the government to do anything well if it doesn't know who anybody (perhaps everybody?) is.

Biometrics Making Life Easier for Malaysia & Singaporeans

It's been a while singe we checked in on the Malaysia-Singapore border biometrics deployment(s), but it looks like things are going well.

No more disembarkation cards for Singapore to Johor travellers (The Star)

Effective today, those entering the state from Singapore will no longer have to fill up the Immigration disembarkation cards or white cards.

This will ease the hassle faced by thousands of foreigners, especially Singa­poreans.

Thousands of Singaporeans and people of other nationalities enter the state daily.

In the early stages of implementation, Malaysia's border initiatives were not met with universal acclaim. Now, it seems that having the new technology in place has allowed for far more efficient border management that is both more rigorous and less consuming of time and paper than the system that used to be in place.

The increased efficiency should also serve to increase economic activity in the area which will have benefits of its own.

Congratulations to Malaysia and to the Singaporeans that make frequent visits. My condolences to whomever prints the immigration disembarkation cards.

This map and photo gives a flavor of the relevant geography. The red dot on the Singapore map is the approximate location of the Johor–Singapore Causeway pictured at right below.

Malaysia Map & Singapore Map Source: CIA The World Factbook.
Johor–Singapore Causeway Source: Wikipedia
(Click Image to Enlarge)

Four Seventh Grade Girls Bring Facial Recognition to the People

This is a very cool story involving market research, technology, training and integration. Congratulations to the Rocky Run Seventh-grade eCybermission team.

Rocky Run Girl Power: Seventh-grade eCybermission team is second in Virginia (The Connection)

“Our project was about biometrics and how people use passwords and user ID every day to access various online resources,” said Rashel. Aisha explained that biometrics is comprised of the individual characteristics used to identify a person.

“We did a survey at the Chantilly Library and discovered that 76 percent of the people didn’t know what biometrics was — and the 4 percent who did didn’t consider using it.”
...
They decided to share their solution with the community. “So we set up an experiment in the library, having people try it out,” said Nayana. “Then we gave them a follow-up survey on biometrics to get their feedback,” said Aisha.

“Over 70 percent said they liked the facial-recognition software and thought it was more efficient and secure than the traditional method of logging on,” said Rashel. It’s important, said Aisha, because “This is one of the many things that people forget to keep secure.”

Read the whole thing.