Israeli Knesset Approves Biometric Database Law

Lord Duran writes "The Israeli Knesset approved a bill that will require every Israeli citizen to submit a visual scan of their face and a biometric scan of their fingerprints to a national database. I, for one, fail to see how this is anything but evil. TFA mentions the Israeli census was breached — I'd like to point out, for comparison, that it's still freely available on your peer-to-peer file sharing network of choice."

Comments

Good quote

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "...that the system would be kept as confidential as any banking website"

Why does that not make me feel better about this?

What could possibly go wrong?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

All citizens of a country which isn't exactly liked by its neighbours are placed on a single database. Database leaks. Any future authority which doesn't like Israelis for any reason can now reliably identify them at crossing points, when travelling, after an invasion, etc.

Re:How do you change your password?

[daid303]

How do I change my password?

Knifes and fire work.

Re:How do you change your password?

[NoYob]

Same problem with all biometrics.

What happens when the system is compromised? How do I change my password?

Or worse, what if Osama Bin Laden (or any other terorist) get's to insert his bio information into an Israeli citizen's profile? Now, Bin Laden has a valid Bio-Informatic ID in Israel. If he shaved off his beard, I couldn't tell him apart. It's been years since I've seen a photo of him. He'd get away with being Bernie Horowitz.

Re:It's Israel

[R2.0]

"You can blame the Jews for persecuting the Palestinians, but you can't say that everything they do is evil."

Your bias is showing through. You are identifying one group by religion and one by nationality. It should either be:

"You can blame the Israelis for persecuting the Palestinians".

Or

"You can blame the Jews for persecuting the Muslims"

Re:It's Israel

[rand0mbits]

You call them terrorists, they call them freedom fighters. It's a matter of perspective. Get some.

I think you're a bit confused. There is nothing stopping a person from being a freedom fighter and a terrorist at the same time. The first term refers to why they're doing what they're doing. The second refers to how they do it. So while Hamas may (it's rather questionable. but so are many other things) be fighting for freedom, how they do it (purposefully targeting, attacking and executing unarmed civilians) makes them terrorists.

Re:Every ID card?

[derGoldstein]

This is what decades of living in fear will do to a population. The more the citizens are afraid, the more power they give to the government.

Hi, I'm an Israeli. I'm not sure about that last bit about "Why would a government make peace under such circumstances?", since that's a separate and extremely involved issue, but you got it right with the above quote. Most of the people I've talked to didn't even twitch at the mention of the new biometric database. News sources who are pointing to this as a very big exception compared other countries are met with feedback comprising of, mostly, "so what?" (when I say feedback I mean on online news sites, talkbacks and the like).

We're used to armed guards at every publicly accessible building, which includes malls, theaters, larger apartment complexes, and of course any government-run institutions. A big part of the police's job here is patrolling in search of signs of terrorism, not crime. We've sat in too many shelters, heard too many missile alarms go off, and seen too many scorched remains of explosions to give a damn about a photo and a fingerprint.

And yes, the Israeli census has been hacked -- not once, but several times. You can search and find several versions according to the date of retrieval.
Personally, I agree with most of the opinions I've head voiced around me -- who cares? Anyone can find my address, phone number, and family tree through the leaked census. Now they'll have my picture, which they could easily find elsewhere, and my fingerprint, which is something that they'll have of every citizen. If they do use the fingerprint to try to access something, they'll likely need additional information, because it will be *known* that this has become publicly available information.

There's a proverb in some european languages which translates roughly as: "you don't worry about a thief in the backyard when your house in on fire".