China Creates Massive Online ID Database

schwaang writes that while the US continues to hash out concerns over the Real ID Act, which aims to create a national ID by standardizing state driver's licenses, China has already implemented a massive online ID database, which they say will help prevent fraud. From the Xinhua English-language site: "Anyone can now send a text message or visit the country's population information center's website, to check if the name and the ID number of a person's identity card match. If they do match the ID card-holder's picture also appears, said the Ministry, adding that no other information is available to ensure a citizen's privacy is protected. Completed at the end of 2006, China's population information database, the world's largest, contains personal information on 1.3 billion citizens. Giving public accessing to the database is also designed to correct mistakes if an individual discovers that their name, number and picture don't match."

Comments

yeah

[macadamia_harold]

China has already implemented a massive online ID database, which they say will help prevent fraud.

And by "fraud", they mean "democracy".

Re:yeah

[VJ42]

Well they're already one better than the proposed UK ID database. What's the world coming to when China is giving public oversight to a huge ID scheme, and here in the UK the government won't even release it's proposed spending plans on it?

Re:yeah

[hackingbear]

But in China, anyone can spend a few buck and get fake ID of any kind: ID card, diploma, driver license, passport, ... Frauds are rampant. How does this relate to democracy? I do worry about the technical security of this database and web site. It is just time that hackers can intrude the system and gain millions of ID/name records.

Re:yeah

[kamapuaa]

How exactly would a system where the public can check if a person's name and ID number match, be a damper on democracy? Does democracy rely on defrauding people about your real ID number? In the US I have to give my ID number to get a credit card, go to the hospital, enroll in a school, etc. These institutions have to confirm my real identity. Is that anti-democratic?

Cool

[djupedal]

This is a great way to do it, you have to admit. I wonder if they list all of us expats as well...

Software side

[LiquidCoooled]

Thats gotta be a pretty massive database, any ideas about the tech running underneath?

Re:Software side

[Frankie70]

Thats gotta be a pretty massive database, any ideas about the tech running underneath?


The data is stored in Microsoft Access & the UI is written in VB6.

Re:Software side

[MillionthMonkey]

I could have a billion rows in a MySQL database running on a server in my mother's basement by the end of next week.

Me and some buds of mine are setting up a centralized information infrastructure for use by the new technological dictatorships that are popping up around the world, and we're going to use LAMP for the whole thing, in a little server farm that keeps my mother's house nice and toasty in the winter. As fascism, technology, and oppression spread, lots of governments are drowning in all the information they are collecting from their population via videocameras, fingerprint readers, financial databases, etc. and they're realizing their own IT infrastructure isn't stable enough to use for effective political oppression- they have all this data, but they need to mine that data, to find people committing thought crimes. That's where we bring in our own value proposition.

Plus we tailor our strategies to handle special customer situations. For example, one of our customers has implemented a one-child-per-couple policy, and this makes several optimizations possible.

Wait what?!

[Anonymous Coward]

So China develops a national ID that ties a name and a number to a photo, can be corrected if its incorrect, and can't be used by the bouncer at the bar to get that hot girl's address and phone number, and we're still stuck on our useless social security cards and drivers' licenses? Clearly China has become the new overlords of freedom.

Who am I kidding? We all know that internally, China will use this database to track every citizens' whereabouts, who they are talking to, what they read at the library and most importantly whether you've bought milk recently or not.

Unlike the NSA

[deathguppie]

They are not keeping this all secret. I don't think it's as big of a deal if we have access to and knowledge of what is kept in the database. I already know that I exist and that there are records of my existance. As long as there is no address or name alongside the picture I don't see this as a bad thing.

This kind of open ID database is not nearly as frightening as the ones being made of us without our knowledge or confirmation of facts pertaining to us.

Revelation 13:16-17, coming soon to the USA

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Good

[Dachannien]

Actually, this is not all that far off from an "identity clearinghouse" idea I had a while back.

You voluntarily register in person with a government agency your name, address, and certain other personally-identifiable information of the sort that is required for a bank or other lender to grant you credit. When you apply for a new credit account somewhere, that lender sends a request to the government agency containing the PII that you provided to the lender. The government agency then contacts you to verify whether the credit request is valid. Then, the government agency responds to the lender, either stating that (1) the person is not in their records, (2) the person is in their records and has confirmed verification, or (3) the person is in their records and has denied verification. It would then be illegal for the lender to open an account for which the #3 response was given by the government, and the lender would be responsible for clearing up all the resultant credit problems.

In order to modify your data with the agency, you must show up in person at the agency's office with photo ID. If such a system were implemented in coordination with local DMVs, they could use the photos on file for your driver's license.

The government already has access to this data anyway, so allowing people to voluntarily put it to good use to stop identity theft is a good thing. The banks won't do it because the losses they suffer haven't reached the amount of money they think they'll lose if they start being more vigilant about credit applications.

for about one week

[peter303]

When I've lived in a new place, including China, you are first hit by the sameness of people and places. Soon that fades into the background and you start seeing the differences among people and places.
It was a little harder the first time was there beacuse everyone wore those blue work clothes called Mao suits (some were green or gray!).

Then some Chinese say Europeans all look alike- European have yellow(*), curly hair and big noses. (* stereotype any hair color not black) Eye shape is a not a standard stereotype to them.

Re:Prevents fraud?

[hclyff]

This is one of the warning signs that you spend too much time on Wikipedia.

You see, some pages on the internet don't have an "Edit" button you can click on.

Re:open source society

[VJ42]

Everything ... open to everyone ... all the time.
If that includes the actions of those at the top. i.e. if I can monitor the actions of the Prime Minister and various top members of military and "intelligence" services; I'm not sure how much I'd mind, as in a population of 60mn how likely is it that I'm being monitored compared with those who are in the public eye (in other words those with power)? That would be real accountability.

Re:Gestapo's dream

[Evilest Doer]

Nazi Germany was planning a similar but telegraph based system that included a centralized department with everyone's picture and a detailed description that could be telegraphed to local police and SS stations to aid suspect identification, interrogations, and worse. Hitler would have been proud of his Chinese friends...

Funny thing about that (not ha-ha, of course) is that there is a book by Aldous Huxley called "Brave New World Revisited" which goes into detail about what is becoming more and more possible due to the "Will to Order" that people, especially those on the top, tend to have. One main thrust in the book is to describe Hitler and the abilities he had with the limited technology of that time and demonstrate what someone like Hitler could do in the future given the types of technology in development. I guess we'll get to find out now, what with the Chinese Communist Party, Putin's Russia, and Bush's US, among others.

Everybody Named Chen Please Stand Up

[DumbSwede]

A couple of quick observations from someone married to a Chinese national and has been to China five times. There are far fewer unique names in China both first and last and generally no middle name. Being able to uniquely identify people in China is a huge problem for private industry and government alike.

I am all for national ID cards and a central database for all citizen info. You provide this info over and over and over to various local, state, and federal agencies. How about just one yearly form you update at tax time? Want to live off the grid? Tough, get over it. We are long past the point where armed insurrection is going to change the American government. The only people that NEED to live off the grid are criminals (I know I'll get some angry replies to that). Lets get rid of black markets, gray markets, and illegal immigration. Need jobs filled? Then either give a decent wage or issue enough citizenships to fill them. Guest Worker program? Just an excuse the screw the working class by artificially keeping wages low, not to mention creating a whole new officially sanctioned underclass.

There are potentials for abuse to be sure, especially if third parties are allowed access (a practice I would like to see barred by law). But the gains to out society probably outweigh any theoretical down side. We're not talking papers you have to carry around or be arrested. We talking about a card you use when applying for jobs or bank accounts. I really don't understand all the hysteria surrounding the resistance to national databases or national IDs, though I'm sure some here will be all to anxious to enlighten me.

Re:The US has got to get with it..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Note to parent: If you have to point out it's satire then it's poorly done.

Spam/Marketing?

[Conception]

So, this seems like a good idea with potential terrible consequences. Let's say I've got a bot net of a million machines. We run the bot-net on the database pages, trying random numbers, gathering a database of names, numbers and pictures. Then I take these names, id numbers and pictures and start making IDs maybe? Or using photo recognition to classify people into different groups for spam/marketing purposes, or maybe by ethnicity by last name, or match it up to a directory service and getting addresses and all...

Of course, this could probably be defeated with enough, "Mother's maiden name?" sorta questions and all, but just seems like a ripe source of information that you may not want getting out. By itself, it's not so damaging, but paired with other resources, perhaps it's the last piece in a perfect identity fraud scheme.

Baby Steps

[Duncan3]

This is merely a toy compared to what Google has on every US citizen. Equifax has the rest, and the CIA ties it all together.

The difference is what China has planned actually sounds useful to everyone, not just the watchers. An old idea, tried many times, but the bad guys want to be the only ones with that info.

What about errors and harassment?

[Quantum Jim]

I'm not so sure about this system. There must be errors in the database. What happens to the unfortunate individuals who don't match because of such an error? This also can be an easy way for the Chinese government to censor people.

If someone says something that the government doesn't like, they just insert an "error" into the database. Instant harassment that those poor individuals will have to go through before the error is fixed. Or even worse, the government could not admit to the change and simply lock the person up on fraud.

Re:If the picture doesn't match?

[Evilest Doer]

When I first moved to the SF Bay Area I had the same problem: I was unable to tell most of my coworkers apart. Since then I have learned to pick up on other cues: weight, dress, shoes, age, voice, location where I see them, etc. It is still moderately difficult to tell with some of them since their faces mostly look identical, but my heuristics allow me to identify the majority of them. And if I run into them outside the context of the workplace, in street clothes, it is much harder.

So, I take it then that you are an uncultured moron. The last job I had, I was about the only person there who wasn't Chinese (aren't H1-B visas great). I never had trouble telling anyone apart. I guess you did and had to tell them apart in the ways you described probably since you never bothered to actually talk to any of them. In the first place, there are Han Chinese and about 51 other different minority groups throughout China. Then, of course, there are people who are mixed - half Han and half Manchurian being one of the more common mixes. Of course, stupid people like you would group them all together despite the incredible differences between them. Would you consider Swedes to be the same as Italians to be the same as Spaniards? Then why do you think all Chinese look the same? And even apart from vast racial differences, Chinese simply do not look so much alike each other. It is only ignorant people like you who believe so. Get out of your parents' basement and actually meet people for a change. Perhaps you'll even meet people who aren't incredible dumbasses like you.