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Content type: Long Read
Governments around the world are increasingly making registration in national digital ID systems mandatory for populations, justifying its need on a range of issues from facilitating access to services, to national security and fighting against corruption. This is an attempt to create a "foundational identity" for an individual, or "a single source of truth" about who someone is, according to a government agency. These identity systems are run by governments, sometimes by private companies, or…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was last updated in June 2021.
In many countries, access to social protection (such as welfare programmes or healthcare) is made conditional on producing a form of identification (“ID”). But obtaining a recognised and accurate ID is often a process riddled with discriminatory designs, bureaucracy and technical failures that prevent individuals from accessing the services they are entitled to. Even when people eventually get an ID, it might not accurately reflect who they are,…
Content type: Examples
On 2 March 2021, the Ministry of Health of Uganda unveiled its plan to immunize millions against COVID-19 starting on 10 March 2021.
The statement made by the Ministry of Health noted that "All persons eligible for vaccination will be required to provide a National Identification Card in the case of Ugandan citizens or a passport in the case of non-Ugandans".
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asc5mQe0-3I
Publication: NTV News
Content type: Report
Privacy International has released a report summarising the result of its research into the databases and surveillance tools used by authorities across the UK’s borders, immigration, and citizenship system.
The report uses procurement, contractual, and other open-source data and aims to inform the work of civil society organisations and increase understanding of a vast yet highly opaque system upon which millions of people rely.
It also describes and maps…
Content type: Report
Privacy International partnered with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School to guide the reader through a simple presentation of the legal arguments explored by national courts around the world who have been tasked with national courts that discuss the negative implications of identity systems, particularly on human rights, and to present their judgement.
This argumentation guide seeks to fill that gap by providing a clear, centralised source of the arguments advanced in…
Content type: Report
Many countries in the world have existing ID cards - of varying types and prevalence - there has been a new wave in recent years of state “digital identity” initiatives.
The systems that states put in place to identify citizens and non-citizens bring with them a great deal of risks.
This is particularly the case when they involve biometrics - the physical characteristics of a person, like fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs.
Activists and civil society organisations around the…
Content type: Report
A common theme of all major pieces of national jurisprudence analyzing the rights implications of national identity system is an analysis of the systems’ impacts on the right to privacy.
The use of any data by the State including the implementation of an ID system must be done against this backdrop with respect for all fundamental human rights. The collection of data to be used in the system and the storage of data can each independently implicate privacy rights and involve overlapping and…
Content type: Report
Identity systems frequently rely on the collection and storage of biometric data during system registration, to be compared with biometric data collected at the point of a given transaction requiring identity system verification.
While courts have arguably overstated the effectiveness and necessity of biometric data for identity verification in the past, the frequency of biometric authentication failure is frequently overlooked. These failures have the potential to have profoundly…
Content type: Report
National identity systems naturally implicate data protection issues, given the high volume of data necessary for the systems’ functioning.
This wide range and high volume of data implicates raises the following issues:
consent as individuals should be aware and approve of their data’s collection, storage, and use if the system is to function lawfully. Despite this, identity systems often lack necessary safeguards requiring consent and the mandatory nature of systems ignores consent…
Content type: Report
While identity systems pose grave dangers to the right to privacy, based on the particularities of the design and implementation of the ID system, they can also impact upon other fundamental rights and freedoms upheld by other international human rights instruments including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights such as the right to be free from unlawful discrimination, the right to liberty, the right to…
Content type: Report
Rather than providing a list of arguments, as is the case in the other sections of this guide, the fifth section provides a general overview describing the absence of consideration of these themes in existing jurisprudence and the reasons why these themes warrant future consideration including identity systems’ implications for the rule of law, the role of international human rights law, and considerations of gender identity.
Democracy, the Rule of Law and Access to Justice: This analysis of…
Content type: Explainer
Definition
An immunity passport (also known as a 'risk-free certificate' or 'immunity certificate') is a credential given to a person who is assumed to be immune from COVID-19 and so protected against re-infection. This 'passport' would give them rights and privileges that other members of the community do not have such as to work or travel.
For Covid-19 this requires a process through which people are reliably tested for immunity and there is a secure process of issuing a document or other…
Content type: Examples
In one of its pandemic-related emergency orders, the Canadian province of Ontario has extended to police officers, First Nations constables, special constables, and municipal by-law enforcement officers the power to require those facing charges under the emergency laws to give their name, date of birth, and address or face fines of up to C$750 for non-compliance.
Source: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/those-violating-ontario-s-emergency-orders-must-id-themselves-or-face-steep-fine-1.4877062…
Content type: Examples
NHS England is using Yoti's digital ID card solution to verify health care workers' identity; the cards are added to staff phones, enbaling them to use a contactless ID app to prove their identity both online and offline. Yoti is providing the system for free for three months to all public health organisations, emergency services, and community initiatives working to contain the pandemic.
Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202004/uk-national-health-service-rolls-out-yotis-biometric-…
Content type: Examples
In Haiti, the National Identification Office has been extremely crowded, despite the government requirement to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people. The cards, which include a photo, name, date of birth, and registry number, are required for bank transactions and other official purposes.
Source: https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/haitians-seeking-national-id-cards-say-government-violating-its
Writer: Sandra Lemaire and Matiado Vilme
Publication: VOA News
Content type: Examples
Ghana's opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, has blamed a spike in cases of COVID-19 on the National Identification Authority's refusal to suspend its registration efforts in the country's Eastern Region even though two citizens filed for a court injunction to halt the operation and even though the conditions violated the country's social distancing directives. Registrants were forced to share fingerprint scanners and wait in overcrowded conditions. Public pressure later forced…
Content type: Examples
An Accra High Court has ruled that the National Identification Authority can continue registering Ghanaians after two citizens filed a case arguing that continued registration violates the social distancing directive issued by president Akufo-Addo. However, a different division of the High Court granted a similar injunction filed by a group of 30 citizens, in force for ten days beginning on March 23.
Source: https://www.modernghana.com/news/992060/continue-with-your-ghana-card-registration-…
Content type: Examples
To help the UK's Department for Work and Pensions handle the more than half a million applications the department received in the last two weeks of March, the identity verification company Nomidio, a subsidiary of Post-Quantum, is offering its service free of charge. The service would enable a simple, server-based three-step verification process through a smartphone to help first-time users prove their identity.
Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202003/free-palm-and-face-biometrics-…
Content type: Examples
British biometric start-ups are helping the UK government create digital passports.
VST Enterprises is providing a biometrics-backed digital health care passport, V-COVID, to help critical NHS and emergency services workers get back to work; the passport will incorporate test results and be included in an app that can be scanned from two meters away. In combination, Patchwork Health, which provides NHS trusts with a digital platform and Truu, which provides a digital staff passport,…
Content type: Examples
Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has exempted survey teams and National ID system registrars from lockdown rules on the basis that they are essential to providing cash distributions and other government responses intended to soften the impact of the community quarantine. Duterte argued that the acknowledged delays to the government's programme to assist low-income families derived from discrepancies in the lists of beneficiaries caused by relying on the 2015 census and that the implementation…
Content type: Examples
The Jamaican Government intends to fast-track creating and implementing a national ID system and give every Jamaican citizen a unique identifier in order to help it distribute aid and benefits needed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government intends the system to be similar to others such as India's Aadhaar and incorporate biometric scans of either fingerprint or retina. It believes the system could also help formalise some professions such as taxi drivers and bartenders that are…
Content type: Examples
Biometrics companies are offering free services to essential businesses, remote workforces, and government agencies administering benefits claims during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are Redrock Biometrics, which is waiving its licence fee for palm print recognition for essential businesses; Daon, which is offering free access to its multi-factor biometrics-based authentication platform, "IdentityX", to all new customers; PrivyID is offering a month of free digital signature service to…
Content type: Examples
As inmates are released from prison in order to mitigate the public health and humanitarian threat posed by the coronavirus poses to a confined population, Minneapolis-based Precision Kiosk Technologies is highlighting its AB Kiosks, which can be used to replace riskier face-to-face meetings with electronic check-ins for newly-released inmates and those on probation, who can use the kiosks to set schedules and trigger reminder texts and emails. The kiosks use fingerprint recognition to verify…
Content type: Examples
Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the House of representatives that efforts to combat Covid-19 would be “greatly assisted” by a mandatory biometric national ID system. The national identification system, NIDS, would require everyone to register and be linked to an individual’s unique biometric. The system has been highly controversial, and was subject to a challenge last year brought by oppossiton leader Julian Robinson in Jamaica’s Supreme Court, which ruled it violated the right to privacy…
Content type: Examples
As part of its efforts to facilitate a transition out of lockdown, researchers at Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, are planning to introduce "immunity certificates" for those who pass an antibody test to show they have had and recovered from the virus and are ready to re-enter the workforce. The intention is to test 100,000 people at a time and use the information so gathered to plan the transition.
Sources:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/29/germany-will-issue-…
Content type: Examples
Owing to concerns about the possibility of spreading the coronavirus via banknotes and payment cards, Russia has begun testing its Unified Biometric System (EBS) for payments at a selection of grocery stores including Lenta supermarkets. The Russian bank VTB plans a mass roll-out for mid-2020. For the beginning of 2021, Promsvyazbank is planning trials of facial biometric payments, a system the bank is negotiating to introduce with several retail chains. Facial biometric payments are made…
Content type: Examples
On March 19, the Peruvian government instituted a daily curfew from 8pm to 5am, which applies to all but those working to provide essential services. Members of the print and broadcast press must carry their special permits, badges, and ID cards, and those requiring urgent medical care are allowed to travel. Private citizens are no longer allowed to drive their own cars at any time except where necessary for the above groups. The law is being enforced by the police and armed forces.
Sources:…
Content type: Examples
In February 2019 Gemalto announced it would supply the Uganda Police Force with its Cogent Automated Biometric Identification System and LiveScan technology in order to improve crime-solving. LiveScan enables police to capture biometric data alongside mugshots and biographical data. CABIS speeds up the biometric matching process by mapping distinctive characteristics in fingerprints, palm prints, and facial images. The Ugandan police will also pilot Gemalto's Mobile Biometric Identification…
Content type: Examples
In November 2018, Italy's Data Protection Authority advised against a proposal from the country's Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, to replace "parent 1 and parent 2" on children's national ID cards with "mother and father". Salvini, who campaigned for election earlier in 2018 on a socially conservative platform, also called for gender-specific terms throughout the application and for applications submitted on behalf of under-14s to include permission from both parents. The DPA argued that the…
Content type: Examples
The Home Office Christmas 2018 announcement of the post-Brexit registration scheme for EU citizens resident in the UK included the note that the data applicants supplied might be shared with other public and private organisations "in the UK and overseas". Basing the refusal on Section 31 of the Freedom of Information Act, the Home Office refused to answer The3Million's FOI request for the identity of those organisations. A clause in the Data Protection Act 2018 exempts the Home Office from…