[Reader-list] National ID cards could trade privacy for security- 188

Taha Mehmood 2tahamehmood at googlemail.com
Sun Aug 9 16:58:35 IST 2009


http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2009/07/31/identity-cards/


National ID cards could trade privacy for security
Friday, July 31, 2009 | 3:11 p.m. CDT
BY STUART LOORY

Stuart Loory, Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies, Missouri School
of Journalism:  The government of India wants to keep track of all the
people living in that country — all 1.2 billion of them. It plans to
issue plastic identity cards with a microchip in each that would
contain biometric information about the holder. The information would
perhaps contain an eye scan, fingerprints, national status, credit
history or criminal records. The idea is to give each Indian a unique
identity, one that would not be stolen or used by others. Into that
database the government could store anything about everyone. Can it
really be kept private, or would this become a goldmine for hackers?
This kind of identity card is catching on around the world, used in
about 100 countries at present. Is this kind of card a benefit or a
problem? Is it true that Indians need to carry as many as 20 different
identity cards and will this one replace any of them?

Ashok Malik, senior writer, Hindustan Times, Pioneer, New Delhi,
India:  It will replace almost all those cards, because 20 cards do
make the average wallet difficult to carry. Privacy has been a big
issue here, as it has been with other countries with such cards. After
the terrorist act in Mumbai last year, people do recognize for reasons
of security we do need some sort of database. The utility factor is
trumping privacy concerns. I appreciate that you are giving Big
Brother a lot of information, but they are going to be useful.


    *
      Stuart Loory, who holds the Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press
Studies at the MU School of Journalism, is the moderator of the weekly
radio program "Global Journalist." It airs at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays on
KBIA/91.3 FM or at www.globaljournalist.org.

Loory: How will they get cards to 1.2 billion people in such remote areas?

Malik: They have several databases to start with. India has one of the
world’s oldest and most rigorous censuses, conducted every 10 years.
It goes into every remote village. The databases are being put
together under a new agency, headed by Nandan Nilekani —   the Bill
Gates of India. He gave up his corporate job to join the government.
In three years, he is supposed to get every Indian citizen and
resident a unique number.

Loory: There is talk of such a card as well in Israel?

Dan Izenberg, law reporter, Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel: There
is a law that is ready to be presented to the Knesset at Parliament
next week, which would produce a biometric system and databank. It is
pretty imminent now.

Loory: Is there general consensus that this is a good idea?

Izenberg: The press was caught napping because of the way it was done
in parliament. Throughout the procedure of preparing and drafting it,
the parliamentary committee worked with virtually no discussion about
it at all. Most people didn’t know about it until in the last week or
two.

Loory: Is it felt that this will make security easier?

Izenberg: The head of the committee that shepherded this bill through
says that 350,000 people, in a country of seven million, have
fraudulent identity documents in the current system. Forgery is a
simple thing to do here.

Loory: In the U.K., there is talk of such cards for people coming into
the country?

Henry Porter, bureau chief, Vanity Fair, political columnist,
Observer, London: Yes. The British ID card is compulsory for residents
who were born abroad. This law is three or four years old. Originally,
the support was about 61 percent before anyone considered the issues.
Now, support is about 79 percent against ID cards. People are making
the argument that it is not just about privacy, which is serious
anyway; it is about transfer of power from the individual to the
state. The state sells to the British people the idea that ID cards
are useful to identify themselves, but actually it is a mechanism for
the state to identify and monitor people. The central database here
will carry a vast amount of information. This can be transferred to
various departments, like the tax man. The vast number of people now
are against it because they feel they are losing something essential
to a free society.

Loory: Would the individuals who must have the cards have access to
their own data?

Porter: Not under our laws. Every possible agency has access to your
file, but you do not.

Loory: What is the situation in the U.S., and how would Americans feel
about such a card?

Thompson: We do have national ID numbers, Social Security numbers
since the 1930s. There is massive resistance to national ID cards. A
law (REAL ID Act) passed four years ago that required all states to
have the same information on the card and make them more secure. The
states resisted; some filed for extensions. The Department of Homeland
Security gave them extensions, and then a big critic of this bill
(Janet Napolitano) was made the head of the Department. If terror
attacks occur and people believed that a national ID card would
prevent that, then there may be some movement that direction.

Porter: The Madrid train bombers all had ID cards; the terrorists from
9/11 had ID cards and passports. Identification makes absolutely no
difference in somebody’s potential danger as a terrorist.

Malik: All of our societies are giving away some of our freedoms in
the belief that we are more secure. In London, New Delhi, many other
cities, there are cameras all over the place eating away at your
privacy for years.

Thompson: Henry, your cameras talk to people, they don’t just watch you, right?

Porter: We have a big problem with a government that is trying to take
a great number of liberties from the people in Britain. It happened
stealthily while the boom has been going on. There is a very
widespread movement, which is acutely conscious of what is going on,
to say that this continues unopposed is wrong.

Loory: In this country we already have the cameras, and through our
drivers’ licenses, credit cards, bank transactions, our records are
all over the place and we have no access to them.

Thompson: In the U.S., there is huge resistance to government invasion
of privacy. But, when it comes to the private sector and the Internet,
we don’t have as many concerns. We don’t care that Google reads all of
our e-mails and then sells us ads based on what is in those e-mails.

Loory: It seems that if we could get access to the government database
ourselves, it would help reverse the invasion of privacy problem.

Thompson: In the U.S., due to privacy concerns, you can’t get your own
health records, which is frustrating and really bad for patients. Some
people say it is much better if everybody could look at everybody’s
records. And, if you were to (conceal names) and compile them, people
could look for patterns to advance medicine. There are places where
giving up some privacy has benefits and America’s concerns about
privacy have actually caused problems.

Malik: The idea of a national health network is big for the advocates
of the national ID cards in India.

Porter: In this extraordinarily rapidly developing world, it is
crucial that the individual maintains some kind of independence from
the state. This is more of a philosophical need than anything about
privacy. The reverse is going on in Britain. It is also important to
examine the vast amounts of information being scooped up by Yahoo and
Google. We have to watch these fragile freedoms that we were born with
so they don’t disappear in our lifetimes, and that we can’t hand them
on to our children.

Loory: Have these issues not come up in Israel because this law has
been going through the Knesset by stealth?

Izenberg: That’s not the reason. The culture and psychology in Israel
is different than the other countries. It is taken for granted that
for reasons of security we have to carry these things to identify
ourselves. The people against the bill didn’t argue against the need
of a smarter ID. They opposed using biometric data and databanks. They
were afraid that it might leak.

Loory: Do the experts in the U.S. feel this would help enhance security?

Thompson: I think people overall think it probably would enhance
security, but there is a vocal and intelligent minority that believe
that the risks of sabotage and hacking into information could lead to
a net undermining of security.

Producers of Global Journalist are Missouri School of Journalism
graduate students Jared Gassen, Geoff George and Brian Jarvis. The
transcriber is Pat Kelley.


More information about the reader-list mailing list