The UAE Claims To Hold the Worlds Largest Biometric Database

another random user writes "The United Arab Emirates holds the largest biometric database in the world, the Emirates Identity Authority has announced. The population register of Emirates ID has over 103 million digital fingerprints and over 15 million digital facial recognition records, which includes multiple records of each UAE resident, and digital signatures as of October 11, senior officials said. Dr. Ali Al Khoury, Director General of Emirates ID, said the authority has submitted an official application to the World Record Academy to recognize this record. Asked about the confirmation of the authority's claims about the world record, an official spokesman of the authority told Gulf News on Sunday: 'We have made worldwide surveys and inquiries with the similar official authorities and agencies of the world governments holding such databases and confirmed that our database is the largest. The World Record Academy also confirmed to us that no other government or authority has made a similar claim for such a record,' he said."

Comments

And they're proud of this because....?

[cayenne8]

Ok...this is a bragging rights type thing somehow??

Re:And they're proud of this because....?

[crazyjj]

No one told them that bigger isn't always better.

Re:And they're proud of this because....?

[man_of_mr_e]

Not to mention, It seems it's completely NOT the largest.

http://www.infowars.com/indias-gargantuan-biometric-database-raises-big-questions/

Re:And they're proud of this because....?

[dkleinsc]

In this case, it's also not just the size that counts, but also how they use it.

Re:And they're proud of this because....?

[jeffmeden]

Ok...this is a bragging rights type thing somehow??

Most telling is that they seem to think so... It's akin to vying for the title of "world's largest landfill", it sounds too much like a story from The Onion.

Re:And they're proud of this because....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta go with Facebook and facial recognition software for the win.

One. Billion. Users.

Haha

[Mitreya]

no other government or authority has made a similar claim for such a record

Other governments, that may be sued for doing this, are just not advertising their databases.

Re:Haha

[Anubis IV]

US will fingerprint and photograph every single person crossing its borders.

No kidding? Apparently I missed that when I re-entered the U.S. two days ago, but I'm sure they must be doing it at every other border point in the U.S.. Or maybe they just overlooked me in the crowd? After all, there were hundreds of us lined up with customs declaration forms and passports ready to show...though, now that I think of it, none of them were getting fingerprinted or photographed either. Nor have I ever been fingerprinted in my entire life, now that I think of it. How very odd that I seem to have missed out on it every time I've crossed the U.S. border.

That said, considering how many people have been booked for criminal offenses in the U.S. over the years, it wouldn't surprise me if it did have a larger biometric database, though that wouldn't exactly be a bragging point.

Re:Haha

[anarcobra]

The USA fingerprints every foreigner entering the country (at least at airports).
This policy is nothing new, and has been in place for some years now.

Re:Haha

[ThatsMyNick]

It depends on your visa and the consulate that issued the visa, actually. The aim is not to get your fingerprints when you enter the US, but to verify that you are the person the visa was issued for. The Canadian GP probably never needed a visa, and there was nothing to verify through finger prints.

Re:Haha

[isorox]

Strange, I am a Canadian citizen who flew from Toronto, Canada to California in August and I was not fingerprinted at all. Perhaps it's only people who are from non-NAFTA countries?

You'd have cleared US immigration in Toronto, didn't you get scanned there?

This year, as a UK passport holder, I've travelled to India, Russia, Israel, Gaza, St Lucia, Indonsedia, Singapore, The U.S, UK, various european countries, and probably a couple of other places I've forgotten.

Only the U.S. takes my fingerprints.

Oh great

[mr1911]

Now the Dept. of Homeland Security will think it is a contest. More rights violations in 3, 2, ...

I knew it!

[wierd_w]

I KNEW those amiga fanbois were up to something! All this time their precious UAE was silently gathering damning personal biometric information on their users, hoping to shame them away from PCs running windows, MacOS and Linux!

Wait.. what? United Arab Emerates? Not Ubiqutious Amiga Emulator?

Wait, what? Nothing to do with amiga users at all? Sir, do you know what site this is!? Honestly, what is this world coming to!

[Note for the humor deprived: there has been so much bullshit pertaining to the middle east lately that I felt some humor was warranted. Deal with it.]

Who reports this stuff?

[NinjaTekNeeks]

I doubt they have China or the US beat. Hell, I'd venture the Casino's in Macau or Las Vegas even have that beat. They just don't report it because an accolade like a world record in this field is useless and frankly not earning you any high fives from the public either.

The 3 best groups to scam

[feedayeen]

Professional athletes, those who've inherited their fortune, and Saudi royalty:

Athletes earned their wealth by virtue of a genetic lottery and countless hours of physical training.
Those who've inherited 'old money' have never struggled in their lives and often live in a bubble.
The Saudi royalty just dug a hole in the ground and discovered a gold mine.

I think somebody just offered to sell them, 'THE WORLD'S LARGEST biometric database' and somebody said sure, I don't have one of those.

There's a reason

[TubeSteak]

The UAE's native population is vastly outnumbered by imported workers.

There's about 1 million natives and about 7 million foreigners.
A small fraction of those 7 million foreigners are white collar, with the rest being cheap labor

Almost all of the labor force is male and the government was scared shitless the last time the workers got upset and started striking.
It's no surprise that they want to build a database of the immigrant workers.

Re:There's a reason

[ilguido]

Don't amass millions of quasi-slaves then.

Population is only 8 million

[robot5x]

Without wishing to collude in this gigantic one-upmanship-fest...

Total population of UAE is around 8 million (estimate - 2005 census it was actually 4 million).

TFA specifically says the records are UAE residents so we aren't talking about huge numbers of transiting air passengers or tourists.

So - how the hell do these numbers add up? If there are now 102 million fingerprint records, has every resident been digitally fingerprinted 12 times?? If there are 15 million facial records, has every resident in the country been imaged twice on average???

If all this is true, UAE should be commended not for the size of their gigantic database, but for a logistical and planning operation on a par with the holocaust.

Re:Population is only 8 million

[ericloewe]

Don't you think it's a bit early for a holocaust comparison?

Re:A dubious distinction

[xtal]

or largest number of people locked up, say..

A dangerous database

[Somebody Is Using My]

Some time back, a major Internet player - I forget who but it might have been LinkedIn - had a breech where millions of passwords were stolen (I'm sure somebody here can fill in the details).

At first, this breach would only seem to be of concern to people who used that service; their accounts were suddenly vulnerable because their passwords were no longer secret. But this breach had even more wide-spread implications than that; suddenly the black-hats had a new and very powerful tool for cracking other systems: a real-world data-dump of live passwords. This not only improved their "dictionary" for brute-force attacks, but also allowed them to create better rules for their cracking tools on which passwords were more likely to be used, thanks to the information they gleaned from these leaks. Cracking live systems became much easier because their tools could give priority to real-life examples rather than blindly attempting every possible permutation.

Now, the situation with the UAE biometric database is not exactly the same, but a lesson should be learned from the password-breeches of the past few years: the value of the information in those databases is more than simply access to whatever locks they control. It can be used - and will be used - in unexpected ways. I can't say I'm smart enough to guess what those ways are (if I was, I probably wouldn't be posting on slashdot), and whatever new technologies are developed with that information are not necessarily evil. But because it is tied so closely to the identity of real people, that information can be very powerful and very dangerous.

Not only should there be safeguards to ensure this information is only collected by responsible parties, but there need to be protections on this information so it does not get released into the wild. Because you can bet that its not only the (supposedly) white-hats interested in this sort of stuff. WE should not be blindly accepting of biometrics (or indeed, any centralization of vital information on people) simply because of the convenience it adds to our lives; there is probably a cost in the long run.