Slashdot Mirror
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.
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,
Well no, its not a magic cure to the terrorist problem, but i can see how it would significantly hamper the terrorists and criminals. Its not like you can use a sim card registered to your name for dastardly deeds. You could for example use foreign sim cards, but you can bet authorities will be watching these with extra care.
Anyway i don't know about where you live but over here biometric passports and id cards are used, meaning that you give your fingerprints when you apply for an id. So names and fingerprints are already tied. Prepaid sim cards are sold, so in principle you can have a cellphone with nothing linking it to your name, but most people just get contracts with service providers so by and large cellphones and identities are tied.
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.
and as we can tie our phone to as example tax-services the government can track me by my number without asking the carriers for it, and yes I was aware of what I was signing into when I put my number in the government sites
what gets me is how is having an illegal sim card not be traceable.
a cell phone is a portable tracking and identifying device. You don't need fingerprints, just force everyone who accesses the local networks to have registered sim cards, linked to registered contracts. no prepaid sims.
if you can't track cell phones without fingerprints then you are doing something wrong.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
'Cause stealing someone else's cell phone and using it would be totally Inconceivable!
/ I don't think that word means what you think it means.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
I would agree in general but I see a big potential loophole. What about foreign sim cards? Does Pakistan plan to apply the same restrictions to people who visit the country? If so then I would think that this might provide a significant hindrance to international tourism and trade - "no cell phone for you unless you go register it with the government while you're here!" On the other hand, if they don't do it, then lawbreakers will just get foreign sim cards.
Maybe the government could make a fairly painless process for foreign visitors.. for example, sim card registration at the point of entry to the country, for those willing to do it (and for those not willing to, they just can't use their phone).
I thought about other potential loopholes, such as phone / sim card theft, but one presumes those cards would be rapidly disabled when reported. A rather nasty possible workaround to the problem would be to kidnap and murder people, steal their phones, and continue making payments in the deceased's name until someone catches on. That could of course carry a risk that if someone did catch on, instead of disabling the stolen phone they may just use it as a beacon to catch you. Satellite phones would work, of course, but they're a lot more expensive, both in terms of hardware and service. And someone not associated with the government in Pakistan using a sat phone is probably as it stands immediately be flagged on the watch list of anti-terrorism task forces the world over.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
I don't know whether to be angry about the incursion against freedom or happy that dem Mozlems be doing something to clean up terrrism.
Where's Fox News to feed me an opinion when I need them?
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.
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
Body found, no fingers and cell phone missing.
'Cause stealing someone else's cell phone and using it would be totally Inconceivable! / I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Vizzini to girlfriend: "You're Pregnant? Inconceivable!
Girlfriend: I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
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.
I know you're probably going for Funny (which it is!) but sadly chopping fingers off to fool biometrics has been done before.
Problem with using the machete technique on the iPhone is that it requires a live body.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
What? You mean something intended to curb or stop this altogether is known to not be effective? Then other than having the national database of fingerprints why do it? NVM answered my own question, to have a national database of fingerprints.
It's good to read that the rest of the world is as screwed as my country when it comes to citizens privacy.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
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 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!
That's why we need to act against it.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Anyone going into Pakistan (or any other foreign country) would need a visa (and probably a Visa). So the government would have ample opportunity to set up tracking / notification / surveillance or whatever they deem appropriate. Killing or kidnapping foreigners for a SIM card seems a bit overwrought as other Slashdotters have quickly discovered several other loopholes (give a random kid $20, kid gets cell phone, kid disappears into the slums .... )
I doubt this will be terribly useful but it might help track phones to some extent.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
'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 think the median deviation of those that peruse Slashdot are a few standards higher than governmental officials, but not so sure about IQ.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"...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?
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 ?
And just from the summary this is exactly what they did in the December incident that supposedly lead to this rule.
"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 if they used cloned SIM cards how would this law prevent them from doing the same thing?
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.
Taliban warrior walks into a cell phone store in Pakistan.
Tells the clerk he wants a phone
Clerk does all the various bits of things required ... asks for a finger print.
Taliban member lays down someones finger on the counter, says 'use this one'.
Taliban sympathetic clerk says 'Okay!'
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You know people are way too paranoid about terrorists when they move to stop "explosive growth" in an industry.
Have you seen the guy? This is one case where he might be using the term correctly!
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
They are tracking (or rather, were previously) cell phones without fingerprints. The point of this initiative is to verify that the identify registered to the cell phone actually belongs to the person using the cell phone. IE, terrorists have been using cell phones registered to other people (or fake identities), and fingerprinting all cell phone users hopefully will make that more difficult or at least provide an avenue for investigation.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Well since cellphone makers are being forced to add the ability to disable stolen phones yes it will be much harder for the criminals and terrorist.and maybe yes using will be extremely hard to do. Nothing is perfect and without flaws.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Seriously, the clerk is likely to say, "I, for one, support our Talibanic overlords!"
Well, if he reads Slashdot enough to pick up the old cliches, he does. Anyway, more likely the Taliban use live hostages, or relatives of hostages. Dead fingers cause comments more than trembling ones.
"And if a country like Pakistan has a serious extremist problem, then action like that is justified."
When you make a statement like that, it becomes very obvious that you have little idea how extreme the problems are in Pakistan.
Let me make it as clear as I possibly can. The supposed "government" of Pakistan controls less than half of the country. Government troops aren't safe anywhere within the country. They can only move openly in little more than half the country - that is, within the portions they actually control, along with some border regions, and areas where the village chieftains view the government with favor. Elsewhere, within the borders of "Pakistan", the troops only move stealthily, or by air, or in force.
Pakistan is more lawless than Mexico, by an order of magnitude.
The northern areas are controlled by tribal chiefs and by the Taliban.
Now, you tell ME how serious the situation in Pakistan is.
Next, you can tell me what the chances are that the government is going to EFFECTIVELY enforce their edicts regarding these cellphones.
You do remember that Osama bin Laden was killed, living a life of relative luxury, inside the borders of Pakistan?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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 are correct - my statements contradict each other. I believe that you get the idea though.
As for the Paks playing us for fools - most Arabs, Persians, Asians, and Pacific Islanders do that readily. We do have a few small spheres of genuine influence, like S. Korea and Japan. The rest of our influence is largely bought with $$$$$ - and when the $$$$$ dries up, there will be no more influence.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br