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Pakistanis Must Provide Fingerprints Or Give Up Cellphone
schwit1 sends this report from the Washington Post: Cellphones didn't just arrive in Pakistan. But someone could be fooled into thinking otherwise, considering the tens of millions of Pakistanis pouring into mobile phone stores these days. In one of the world's largest — and fastest — efforts to collect biometric information, Pakistan has ordered cellphone users to verify their identities through fingerprints for a national database being compiled to curb terrorism. If they don't, their service will be shut off, an unthinkable option for many after a dozen years of explosive growth in cellphone usage here.
Prompted by concerns about a proliferation of illegal and untraceable SIM cards, the directive is the most visible step so far in Pakistan's efforts to restore law and order after Taliban militants killed 150 students and teachers at a school in December. Officials said the six terrorists who stormed the school in Peshawar were using cellphones registered to one woman who had no obvious connection to the attackers.
Prompted by concerns about a proliferation of illegal and untraceable SIM cards, the directive is the most visible step so far in Pakistan's efforts to restore law and order after Taliban militants killed 150 students and teachers at a school in December. Officials said the six terrorists who stormed the school in Peshawar were using cellphones registered to one woman who had no obvious connection to the attackers.
So those intending criminal activities will just find a way around it. I wonder if there is an ulterior motive for collecting all those fingerprints.
Which is exactly the point in Pakistan.
.... solution is more registration?
More of this ridiculous "if you can't get hold of the terrorists, carpet-bomb the innocent with surveillance". Hey, we are talking of terrorists, who regularly buy assault rifles and explosives, who happily will die in a suicide bombing or in a shot exchange with special police forces. Surely they'll find it very difficult to get an unregistered SIM card.
Fingerprint biometrics is oldschool, and in my opinion very soon rendered useless.
This will be misused again by real terrorists, and the government.
The normal citizens will take the real hit.
Like to also ask if the government officials are also forced to do the same thing ?
If they agree, theres allready a way around this, if not well, it's government so no penalty.
All in all, completely useless waste of poor countrys money.
for the Taliban as personal freedom and liberty takes it up the ass yet again,
The list of folks that don't come in to renue their SIM might be intersting as well
Coupled with a little network analysis to see what number they moved to
Does the visit also include a lecture to be sure to tell us if the SIM get's stolen.
I guess SOP is to make that call when you do something bad
Unless they implant the SIM in the person, it doesn't seem all that useful.
Perhaps require a finger print scan to use the phone
That ought to take about a day to hack
This might catch some of the bad guys
But it is only an annoyance to the smarter ones
Still, probably a good idea overall
According to the summary, the attackers were all using cellphones registered to someone else. It might help make a case against the woman to whom the cellphones were registered, but I don't see how this would curb future attacks.
Even that link to the crime is tenuous at best, since it would be easy enough to create reasonable doubt and claim biometric identity theft. Without limits on the number of SIM cards registered to a single user, nothing is stopping them from getting a mule who isn't on a watch list to buy the burners or even using multiple stolen identities for the same purpose.
If they limit things to 1 SIM card per person, then it might have a chance of working, since a victim of identity theft would know since their service would be shut off.
Yeah, the guy who is willing to blow himself to bits by strapping himself to a bomb is really going to try to keep his fingerprints a secret.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
they say it cristal clear and without any shame: “Watching people when they move, it’s natural: Every country does it. ” Jaffri, president of the Pakistan Information Security Association.
Its worth noting this enforcement is largely designed to target terrorist attacks against the Pakistani government. The longterm solution to Pakistans terrorism problems is largely structural and political. Increased education funding, crackdowns on government corruption, increased employment, and most of all a more vocal and political opposition to the United States drone war. Nawaz Sharif is kept in power by coup and crackdown, not free election, while the united states basically shovels money into his political fund. The fingerprint system is, conveniently, also an excellent means by which to deter active protests and dissent.
people are terrorists due to a combination of desparation, isolation, and doctrine. Once a person becomes determined with nothing to lose, then theyre not easily dissuaded from terrorist acts. Having your village razed by foreign aircraft you could never see is one thing, but for your government to turn a blind eye just adds insult to injury and paves the way for neurotic warlords and clerics to fill the void.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Why not use the same logic with guns?
If a person who asks for a gun license and enters 'armed robbery' as reason for obtaing one, just refuse it.
Presto, no crime anymore.
the dumb terrorists get executed out of the gene pool.
Many countries require a fingerprint to vote. So this may not be a big deal.
Meaning a fingerprint will provide accurate identification of the buyer, unlike now. Unfortunately, the outside of the body can be faked: eg. face, fingerprint, signature. Biometric measuring technology is gaining accuracy but it's a long way from foolproof. This will not stop identity theft.
Is this database available online for real-time identification? If checking is done after the sale, authorities know only who didn't buy the phone. If the buyer isn't on the database, it won't tell them anything. A criminal can keep the phone turned off and battery removed until he commits his malevolent deed, thereby preventing the phone from spying on himself. Then there's the problem of fake identities being stuffed into the database. If that is done, the database is useless.
Mightened the Taliban (aka virtually every tribe in north western in Pakistan) resort to stealing SIM cards or buying them on the black market. Considering that the Taliban had virtual safe haven in North Pakistan. Such attacks don't seem to be the product of rational minds. The net effect being to force Pakistan Intelligence to move against them.
In one of the world's largest — and fastest — efforts to collect biometric information, Pakistan has ordered cellphone users to verify their identities through fingerprints for a national database being compiled to curb freedom.
Fixed that typo for you.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Terrorism is a universal excuse to get people to give up more of their rights. The USA got the Patriot act. This is slowly going to be implemented in different forms in other countries .
they wouldn't try something as pointless as registering cell phones.
Combine the former with a little GPS or even cell tower analysis and they'd have much better tools and not be tipping the enemy off ...
Though I suppose they can do both.
Ban every phone except iPhone 6. Everyone knows that your fingerprint get sent to NSA when you touch the reader. Just ask them for data. Simple.
Bigger problem is that you can pay literally anyone in Pakistan 20 dollars and they will register it for you.
the hijackers for the world trade center bombings:
Mohamed Atta (Egyptian) held a technical degree,
Abdulaziz al-Omari (Saudi Arabian) held a religious degree from a cleric,
Wail al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian) was mentally ill and had gone to numerous clerics for assistance,
Waleed al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian) had no education,
Satam al-Suqami (Saudi Arabian) dropped out of law school.
Atta was a rather brilliant individual beaten down in egypt by a regime that at the time was supported directly by the United States. Atta was enraged by Egypt's ruling elite and its crackdown on dissenting political groups. He was ultimately an educated minority yet what I advocate and what you fail to recognize is an educated majority. Islam, Witchcrat, Atheism, Mormonism, Communism, Catholicism, and Blacks have all been demonized based on a complex structure of pseudointellectual dogma thats designed to ensure they remain the enemy despite reason and critical thinking. Islam is convenient, because it foregoes critical discussion of a disasterous western foreign policy perpetuated by the carter doctrine and a gerrymandered warhawk political elite.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"how come in a simple public discussion slashdot readers can come up with simple practical scenarios why mass-surveillance "solutions" like this will be completely ineffective, yet the people considering (or actually) deploying them cannot?"
I'm fairly certain the median IQ ( not to mention ethical and moral standards ) of those who peruse Slashdot are a few standard deviations higher than those who run governments. I'm half surprised that the Pakistani government didn't mandate the registration of all potential terrorists :|
Recruiter: " I'm sorry Achmed, we cannot hire you for the intern suicide bomber position that just opened up because you're not certified . . . . "
Achmed: " I keel you ! . . . . Infidels "
How is making sure you know who it was going to scare them?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
"...after a dozen years of explosive growth in cellphone usage here"
Interesting choice of words.... lol!
It is interesting to me that you start with the Carter Doctrine, surely many other prior interventions by the west in the region are equally if not more important?
Here, have a five year old story that shows that nothing has improved in the meantime. Now it is up to you to show why the next five years would suddenly show improvement, against the odds. The latest improvement I spotted was... moving to "facial recognition" that turned out to be just as trivially foolable with another "smart" phone.
Plenty of countries have been oppressed by the US, south America comes to mind. And you don't see them strapping bombs to themselves in schools.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Let's say in the US we routinely had bombs blowing up by a nonidentifiable group, so we can't perform any real profiling.
Say 5000 people[1] were killed every year in the US for the last 15 years due to these hard-to-identify terrorists.
The public would scream for biometric everything.
[1] - Scaling to match the US population.
Beetle B.
Guys, this is not the US, where "terrorists" are trotted out like the bogeyman for scare effects. In Pakistan, terrorists are real, active forces that have de facto control over significant amounts of the country. They are absolutely trying to get control their citizens, and in fact specifically to stop them from trying to overthrow the government, and you know what? Most Pakistanis support this because the citizens we are talking about are not part of any legitimate political process, but instead murders and gangsters who are responsible for thousands of deaths. If the US was doing the same thing for the same stated reasons, it would absolutely be a crock of shit, but this is not the US. Given the circumstances, trying to positively ID people buying phones is pretty reasonable.
Very true, but as US oppression has many shapes, you can't really just make that statement and expect it to have any weight, unless you go into further depth to find a directly comparable situation where the only variant is the religion of those involved, and specifically their personal beliefs. We have plenty of cases of terrorism from non-Muslims, so this really is a moot point. No one religion has a monopoly on terrorism.
You know people are way too paranoid about terrorists when they move to stop "explosive growth" in an industry.
We bomb them with drones and engage in military operations for extrajudicial executions regularly. We don't treat them like a sovereign country. So why do we care if they lose more rights? We stepped on them since colonial times. As long as the first worlders don't go through this indignity, they can all go to hades.
Authorities are also struggling to curb extortion carried out by criminals, often affiliated with banned militant groups, who make threatening phone calls demanding money.
That's a nice dinner you got there. Would be a real shame if it got cold... buy my product!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You mean, growth in explosive cellphone usage ?
Remove all mobile telecommunications companies, bring the pigeons back and mail goats curriers.