[Reader-list] Privacy, Surveilance and Identity Cards

Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha at sarai.net
Tue May 29 20:54:49 IST 2001


Dear Readers,


I have been looking recently at all the ways which we are being looked at 
by the unblinking eye of the state.
Partly, this came about as a result of the recent postings on this list 
regarding privacy issues, and my own earlier queries about the ways in 
which online and offline life are sometimes coterminous.

Also, I have been reading a book by Simon Davies,  called :

  "Big Brother - Britain's Web of Surveillance and the New Technological 
Order". (Pan, 1996)
  ISBN 0 330 33556 1

The book offers a very detailed insight into new technologies of 
surveillance and the impact that they are having and can have on our 
everyday lives. For a very comprehensive review of this book, I would 
recommend a visit to a review essay by Ian Lloyed on the website of the 
Journal of Information, Law and Technology at 
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/BookRev/3lloyd/default.htm

Anyway, having read and thought about all this, I wondered if it would be 
at all useful to check if similar things were happening in India. My 
assumption was, they can't be happening here, how can the huge 
technological infrastructure necessary for a massive surveillance state be 
set up in Indian conditions.

Unfortunately, I have to inform you all, that my preliminary (and 
superficial) investigations on the web in this regard, proved my assumption 
absolutely wrong.

I want to share with you my findings,

There are very comprehensive plans being made for a massive "citizens 
database" to be owned and operated by the state. For some reason 
(intra-governmental) this could not be done in sync with the recently 
conducted census, but census data will no doubt be used for building this 
data base. This excercise will climax in a scheme variously called NISHAN 
(national identification system home affairs network) or the INDIA CARD, by 
which all citizens will have to carry identity cards containing all 
relevant information (including legal records)  about them, identifying 
photographs  and bio metric date (data about their body measurements, hand 
prints etc.)

The Union  Ministry of Home Affairs has commissioned Tata Consultancy 
Services (TCS), a software consutancy multinational based in India,  to do 
a feasability study for the National ID card scheme.The TCS report suggests 
that the whole excercise be made market friendly, and that the state 
actually make money out of it by selling information that it gathers about 
citizens to corporate bodies,. This will no doubt be seen as a gem of 'self 
sufficiency' inducing mechanisms of state control.

To find out more about NISHAN read the following news reports :
(Dataquest Magazine) http://www.dqindia.com/content/top_stories/101022206.asp
(Hindustan Times)http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170900/detFEA03.asp

There is another proposal (the INDIA Card Scheme)put forward by a private 
Bangalore based  company (Shonkh Technologies International Ltd.) which 
will no doubt be a major player in terms of making a bid for actually 
executing this scheme on an India wide basis.
to find ou more about this, visit the Shonkh Technologies website at 
http://www.shonkh.com/indiacard.html

In fact the first instance of a comprehensive national 
computerized  identity card system has been tried out in Thailand where it 
is now in operation. It is not always the industrialized west that takes 
quickest to the dissemination of high tech surveillance schemes on a 
'nation' wide basis. Modernizing elites in the so called 'Third World' are 
often better placed (due to lack of constiutional safeguards to privacy, or 
lack of awareness at the public level of privacy issues) to put in place 
'technologies of mass surveillance'.

For an analysis of the politics of Privacy and Surveillance, go to the 
Privacy International Website at
http://www.privacyinternational.org/

for a good summary of the politics of Online Privacy Issues, go to the 
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC) webpage on  "Privacy and Human 
Rights" at
http://www.gilc.org/privacy/survey/

For an "India Country Report on Privacy Issues" at the GILC site,  go to 
http://www.gilc.org/privacy/survey/surveyak.html#India

Now , an identity card scheme always looks innocuous, but its implications 
are very dangerous. Information about each of us is scattered in various 
data banks, these could be - police records, medical records, electoral 
registers, taxation records, etc. Their collation in a single database, means

(I) the entries in one set of data can influence other, unrelated parameters.
(let me give you a hypothetical example - for instance, a centralized 
electoral roll could register whether or not someone has voted in any 
electoral excercise, I for instance, don't vote. now if 'not voting' were 
ever to be rendered a disqualifying factor in any other circumstance - 
applying for a passport, a phone, a gas connection, applying for a job - 
then my non voting behaviour would show up, every timne i did either of 
those other things. So I go for a job interview, I am asked for my 
NISHAN/INDIA card, which I submit, it reveals that I have not voted. So, I 
get disqualified as a non active citizen, I dont get the job.

(II) a huge invasion of privacy gets legitimized, suppose i am HIV 
positive, and my medical records register that on to my card, I try and get 
a house on rent, new regulations stipulate that all landlords have to have 
prospective tenants cross checked at the local police station, how do they 
do that, simple they ask for your NISHAN card, and run it across their 
machine which hooks up to the centralized database, and of course it 
reveals that I am HIV positive.The landlord, the police station knows i am 
HIV positve, I dont get to be the tenant they choose.

Consider that the Indian Constitution does not recognise the Right to 
Privacy as a fundamental right.
Consider also that the state will (if this scheme gets underway) to farm 
and manipulate data about citizens
Consider also that those who will not get the cards (perhpas they are 
emigrants or refugees) will now have to face considerable police 
harrassment at day to day levels because they will not be able to produce 
their cards when they are stopped on the streets.

For more on ID cards ( A FAQ, campaigns against ID cards and personal 
testimonies against ID cards) go to 
http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/idcard/ (in the Privacy International 
site)

Cards and Databases are only one part of the excercise in surveillance.
In a fascinating document, that I came across recently, there is clear 
indication that the surveillance trade in India is going to be a real boom 
industry. theres is an expected annual increase demand of 25% each year in 
the sale of closed circuit television cameras in India in the next few 
years. This is big money.

Surveillance Cameras are already making their entry into our lives at 
various major traffic intersections and in all of central new delhi, as 
well as in banks, apartments, offices and industrial areas. If you couple 
pattern recognition systems on to video surveillance footage, then you have 
the surveillance camera meeting the identity card in a database somewhere 
in a government mainframe. It is most likely that people like you and me 
will get caught in the corssfire between the huge arrays of data produced 
by "citizen databases" and surveillance technologies.

for a excerpt from a report pn Surveillance Equipment and the rising demand 
for it in India go to
http://www.policeinindia.com/fire.htm

Incidentally, the kind of people who sell surveillance equipment are also 
often the kind of peoplke who sell torture equipment (electrical 
applaiances)  which goes under the name of 'crime control' equipment. If 
you look hard enough on the internet you will find the same companies 
selling this kind of stuff in India, Turkey, Brazil, and other developing 
democracies.

Finally, I would like to mention the fact that the information gathering 
apparatus acts concretely and at the most everyday and intimate level. 
Police stations across the country are now going to ask us about
(i) the people who visit us or work in our homes
(ii) the strangers we meet and befriend
(ii) guests who happen to be non indian nationals


they need to know all this for the sake of something called national 
security...
failure to give this information over, we are told, are offences punishable 
with imprisonment, and fines or both.

If you want to know what a police identification form of a 'floating 
population' looks like -download this marvellous form prepared by (in this 
instance, the cybersavvy) Chandigarh Police at -
http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/idcard/

http://chandigarhpolice.nic.in/vschandigarhpolice/b_form_4.pdf

national security = personal insecurity

Cheers

Shuddha


Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net





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