The government approved the establishment of a biometric database

According to the bill, which will soon be submitted for first reading in the Knesset, every Israeli citizen will be obliged to provide the Ministry of the Interior with his fingerprint and enable biometric identification of his facial features as a condition for receiving an identity card.

Yehuda Conforts, ThePeople system, DailyMaily

Yesterday (Sunday), the government accepted the bill of Interior Minister Meir Shetrit to establish a biometric database of all citizens of the State of Israel. The project is intended to be part of the Smart ID project, which has not yet started. According to the bill, which will soon be submitted for first reading in the Knesset, every Israeli citizen will be required to provide the Ministry of the Interior with their fingerprint and enable biometric identification of their facial features as a condition for receiving an identity card. The fingerprints collected will be inserted into a chip that will be added to the smart identity card. It should be noted that the biometric identification is also intended to be included in the electronic passports that will be issued to Israeli citizens in the next two years.

The initiative for the bill is from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Internal Security. Minister Shetrit promoted the initiative, which was started by Roni Bar-On - the current Minister of Finance and former Minister of the Interior, since he began his term. At the beginning of the government meeting yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the justification for approving the law is twofold: dealing with the phenomenon of forgery of identity cards and improving service to the citizen. "What will be done in the field of biometric information will be integrated into the identity cards and travel documents abroad in a way that will create the highest level of accuracy that is currently known in the scientific world regarding the identification of a person," said Olmert. In addition, he noted, the certificates will be used for more accurate identification of citizens. According to Olmert, "this will allow the residents of Israel to contact the service providers without going to the government offices." Olmert praised Shatrit and said: "I want to praise the minister, who, due to his education in the field of microbiology, pushed the issue."

The Minister of Internal Security, Avi Dichter, said at the cabinet meeting that "the need to ensure a single-value connection between the subject of the certificate and the certificate itself, is an extremely important need in light of the culture of forgeries that exists in the world. Success in this area will allow the relevant bodies to create a single-valued interface between the participant of the certificate - and the certificate."

According to the bill, a separate authority will be established that will deal with the issue, and will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the database, including the responsibility for preserving the privacy required by virtue of maintaining this sensitive database. The committee in the Knesset that will deal with the issue will be a joint committee for the Interior Committee, Environmental Protection and the Subcommittee for Secret Services, which will deal with the law and its implementation and whose deliberations will be confidential. The police will be able to receive information based on the biometric databases only following a written request from a police officer and with the approval of a district judge.

From the data of the Ministry of the Interior, as mentioned in the ministry's original bill, it is said that in 2007 over 155 thousand identity cards were stolen or damaged. In addition, between the years 2003-2007, the Ministry of the Interior was asked to issue about 58 thousand new certificates. From the data of the Israel Police, it appears that 52% of the certificate changers who contacted the office are criminals.

Area: complete lack of understanding

The approval of the bill drew a wave of reactions - both from civil parties and from professionals. The Bar Association, for example, published a harsh message at the end of the week, according to which the biometric database will seriously harm privacy. The bureau demands that the minister of the interior delay the law. The Committee for the Protection of Privacy at the Bar Association also appealed to the Minister of Justice, Prof. Daniel Friedman, with a request to prevent the approval of the law.

Ze'ev Ashet, CEO of Komada, also strongly criticized the bill. In a conversation with DailyMaily, Esat said: "A smart identity card and means of electronic verification for every citizen are a welcome thing and a big step forward. However, fingerprints and facial features on the smart chip are a disaster in terms of individual rights and a complete lack of understanding of the umbrella. There is also no addition regarding identity verification, because identification through biometrics, unlike PKI, is not absolute identification and is therefore also not admissible in court, certainly not when it is placed on a card and does not represent the given state of the person - whether he has gained or lost weight since the fingerprints were taken." .

According to Asheat, "storing biometric information on a smart card will be a fertile ground for identity thieves when the penalties stipulated in the law will not deter them." Tseat adds and comments that there is a huge difference between the decision to take biometric data from everyone who goes abroad, and the blanket application of the decision to all citizens of the country - they have no way to object. "A person who does not want to give his facial features biometrically, can choose not to go abroad, just as those who come to the USA are obliged to give a fingerprint, and if they do not want to, they do not have to enter this country."

Beyond that, the area is troubled by the fear of nationalizing the entire issue of approving agencies in the country: "The Ministry of the Interior's further attempt to nationalize the services of the approving agency for electronic signatures and make the provision of electronic signatures a government service instead of encouraging computer companies to provide it - will not succeed this time either and will fail in the Knesset. The business community will not agree that the government will be the one to approve signatures of the business sector and determine who signed and when." It should be noted that Comada - led by a territory, is currently the only approving agency in Israel.

Noam Kaplan, director of the public sector at EDS Israel, said: "The issue should be examined from two aspects - the security aspect and the aspect of providing services. From both aspects the step is certainly welcome for the following reasons: from the security aspect of a country plagued by terrorism, it has great value as it is possible to see who is involved and where; From the aspect of providing services - this opens up many options for us to provide better service to citizens, the ability to exercise remotely without the need to physically go to the officials who provide services, everything is computerized and there will be fewer queues. As for those who are afraid of 'Big Brother', this is a progressive phenomenon all over the world and there is no need to stand against it, but to take the benefits from it. Everyone who comes to the US - fingerprints are taken. So why would there be a reservoir there and not here?"

Biometrics leave a sloppy fingerprint

The government's dramatic decision to take fingerprints and facial features from all its citizens, and to store all this personal information in a biometric database, was perhaps ahead of its time: in order to add a biometric chip to a digital identity card, one must first have such a card ● In the meantime, opponents of the system are throwing up their sleeves - In an experiment carried out on behalf of the British Times, all the digital readers through which it was transferred

Yehuda Conforts, ThePeople system, DailyMaily

This week opened with the government's dramatic decision to take fingerprints and facial features from all its citizens, and to store all this personal information in a biometric database that will be used by the various authorities to better identify us. The bill approved by the government will soon be discussed in the Knesset in the various committees. The biometric law reignited the heated debate between the opponents of the biometric system and its supporters - each side with its own cutting arguments, with none of the hawks being without interests.

When the Prime Minister's Office published the government's decision on biometrics, quite a few people remembered the late Uzi Berlinski. There is no doubt that he would have been privileged to be with us today, those days were days of peace for him. Berlinski was one of the stubborn fighters for the integration of the biometric issue in the national identification system of the State of Israel. For years he was like a lone voice in the wilderness, and confronted quite a few colleagues in the profession, computer people, security experts, who did not completely agree with his views.

The privacy fanatics oppose the biometric method. According to them, a sweeping collection of biometric fingerprints and facial features from all citizens, without them having the right to refuse, would constitute a gross intrusion into the right to privacy and anonymity. If the government decided to try and apply the decision only to those going abroad, due to the need to soon issue electronic passports to all citizens who want it, it would still be possible to live with it. Because, going abroad is the choice of a free citizen, and if he has a problem with countries that already require a fingerprint upon entry, then he would do well not to enter that country. This rule also applies to Israeli citizens. However, when it is determined that the condition for issuing an identity card to every citizen is to take a fingerprint from him, this is already an exception to the rules. This argument probably has counter-arguments originating from security reasons, forgeries and the like.

Only one thing, for some reason, the government forgot: in order to add a biometric chip to a digital identity card, there must first be such an identity card. Yes, the reference is to the "Talem" project, which has already been given the more recent nickname - "Dream Project". The tender, as we know, is stuck and they are only now starting negotiations with HP. And here, suddenly a biometric element is also thrown into the space which was not part of the tender at all. Fortunately, HP and the other competing companies are reassuring that for them the biometric chip can also be added. But, all this only after there will be a smart identity card for the residents of the country. When? Nobody really knows.

Did the Minister of the Interior, Meir Shetrit, "forget" that we still don't have certificates? Most likely not. But he knows very well that the days of the government in which he serves are coming to an end, and "you will know what will happen in the next government". It is clear to him and to everyone that even if the sweeping proposal of fingerprinting for all citizens does not pass, he will be able to implement it in the passport auction which the state must carry out soon, otherwise we will have to request an entry visa from every country we want to fly to.

How did bin Laden manage to get through…

The dilemma between a digital signature, which is the accepted method at the moment, and biometrics, is not only the domain of Israelis. A few days after the government made the sweeping decision, the London Times published the results of the experiment that its people did with the help of a Dutch scientist: a picture of Osama bin Laden and Elvis Presley was planted on a digital passport (e-passport). All the digital readers through which the passport was transferred did not recognize the forgery. If this passport had been in the hands of Bin Laden, or one of his people, the consequences would have been very serious. This experiment proves not only that biometrics are not XNUMX percent reliable, but also that the readers of the certifying bodies, who are supposed to check the digital signature as well, failed to detect the fraud. The Dutch researcher illustrates the thesis that no tool is immune to counterfeiting, and hence all opponents of these methods can build barbed wire of additional reasoning.

Perhaps we should also understand that in European countries, as well as in the United States, the fact that people are forced to identify themselves constitutes quite a trauma for the local population. In our country it may be obvious, but with us it always has to be different, because we are a nation unlike most nations. With us, first we write bills, pass them through the government (what minister would not raise a finger in favor of "improving service to the citizen"), and only then do we start talking about smart IDs, arguing in the Knesset about the meanings of individual modesty, spending a few years in the High Courts, and in the meantime, The industry of counterfeiting and identity theft for the purposes of terrorist attacks continues to flourish. They haven't heard of biometrics yet. Neither do we.