26.09.2013
Why LALIT is Against the New Biometric ID Cards
* Until now, it is not compulsory to present an ID card to anyone. As from next year in October, 2014, according to the National ID Card Act 2013, you will have to present your card to anyone who, by law, can call on you to do so, or to “every” one else with reasonable authority. If you do not produce it on-the-spot, the person can “direct” you as to who to present it to, within what delay, and where. This means back to the times of indenture when you needed papers in order to leave the Sugar Estate you were assigned to. There goes our freedom of movement, won less than one hundred years ago.
* There will be an electronic chip inside the card bearing invisible personal information on you, including your finger prints. The law says that “such other particulars as may be prescribed” can be added to the Government On-Line Centre data-base and your card. This is an assault on privacy. What is more private than your own fingerprints?
* We will not even know, in the long run, what is on the card about ourselves. However, other people will know. A whole list of them: any number of Civil servants including police officers, any number of employees of the three Singapour firms setting the system up, and secret services like that of the USA. Probably hackers, too. Hackers recently took 3 days to hack the finger-print security in the new Apple i-phone. Big corporations (pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, for a start) will willingly bribe their way to this kind of data for their targeted marketing.
* The ID Card itself is like the tip of an ice-berg. The ice-berg is the huge on-line data-base that will be physically run from Ebene. Our biometric photographs and all 10 fingerprints will be there. Biometric photos are those that allow secret services to feed in a crowd shot, and get the names and addresses out in a few seconds, after matching against this data-base. This is why people call this new ID card system “Big Brother”.
* Say you and a friend stop at a stall somewhere after work and drink a fruit juice together. Being good citizens, you throw your empty plastic bottles into the bin on the spot. That night there’s a crime there. Next morning, the police cordon off the area, and pick up all the clues, including the two plastic bottles. In no time the centralized data-base comes up with your and your friend’s names and addresses. The presumption of innocence just evaporates. These are real dangers of this kind of centralized database.
* Information stored in the ID System falls under the Data Protection Act (DPA). This sounds very safe. But the Data Commissioner can delegate any of his powers to the Police. In this way, it is obviously an institution that is basically part of the police.
* Despite the DPA supposedly “protecting” data being manipulated all over the country, including the ID data that will be stored on-line, the law specifically exempts data on us from all manner of protection offered if it concerns any police enquiries, even prevention of crime, even tax, and obviously the country’s security, as defined by the regime of the moment.
* The smart cards we are being called up to produce, also act as tracking devices. People will know where we are as we access different machines, in banks, post offices, hospitals, government offices and so on.
* Even private sector bosses, like banks, will have machines to read invisible data on the ID cards.
* The Government has announced that anyone who needs to replace their ID card will foot the bill. It will cost Rs350 the first time your bag is stolen, then it will double, then triple. It is worth remembering that 300 people lose their present ID Cards every day. Young people are obviously at a high risk of losing their cards.
* The people of Britain, Australia and the U.S.A., in their wisdom, rose up against this type of Smart Card when their respective Governments introduced them. They knew the dangers for freedom of movement and the right to one’s privacy. They know the dangers of such centralized data systems. Adolf Hitler, for example, used the computerized data-base and I.D. card system installed in Germany in the 1930’s by IBM in its punch card computers, in order to procede towards the systematic extermination of millions of German people.
No to the new biometric ID Cards. If you want to help in the campaign to stop the cards, contact us at lalitmail@intnet.mu or ring on 208 5551 or 208 2132.
THE NEW I.D. CARD SYSTEM IS THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AUTHORITARIANISM!