Israel Moves Toward a National Biometric Database 476
An anonymous reader writes "Israeli's government has approved the creation of a biometric database which would contain fingerprints and facial photos of all Israeli citizens. If the bill becomes law — and it is at an early stage — the biometric information of each citizen would be embedded in their passport and national ID card. Israeli citizens would be required by law to submit to biometric testing upon request by government employees, soldiers, and policemen, so that their biometric info can be compared to the info embedded in their ID card / passport. The declared purpose of the bill is to combat forgery of passports and ID cards, and also to aid identification 'in cases of a mass disaster.' The bill was approved over objections from civil rights groups and the Israeli Bar. The article notes that no other democratic country has a comprehensive biometric database of all citizens."
UK National ID Card (Score:5, Informative)
The article notes that no other democratic country has a comprehensive biometric database of all citizens.
But the UK is working on it [no2id.net].
National Registration Act, Singapore (Score:1, Informative)
Singapore's had their National Registration Act since 1966.
Every Singapore Citizen is registered, with their facial photograph and fingerprints (and more).
Re:Freedom! (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds more insidious than some of the neighboring countries we decry as anti-freedom.
I wonder how many of my tax dollars are being used by their government to subjugate their people? I don't like this at all, not for any nation.
According to "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" [wikipedia.org]
Israel is "the largest total recipient since World War II" of U.S. aid. "Total direct U.S. aid to Israel for this period amounts to well over $140 billion since World War II. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is about one-fifth of America's foreign aid budget." The authors claim that "This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain."
"Israel is the only recipient of U.S. aid that does not have to account for how the aid is spent." According to the authors, this makes it "virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the United States opposes."
Reality Check: They have had this data for years (Score:3, Informative)
Since most the country does compulsory army duty, they already have everyone's fingerprints, photos, dental records and blood tests etc. (things that army needs to identify you when you come home in multiple pieces)
Since the US and UK have mandated biometric passport data, they would be collecting biometric data anyway.
The only thing that this does is cover the remaining percentages and have dogged the army.
A national ID card has been around for many many years. Luckily for Israelis they do not have a governments that seem to abuse this data nor a high court that bends over and looks the away when people try and abuse this power.
The reality is that the data exists. The only new factor here is that it will be embedded on your ID card rather then click away on a terminal.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:4, Informative)
I'll post this as AC, to avoid karma-whoring.
The parent is referring to a book by George Orwell called Animal Farm. It's out of copyright in the UK, so can be read online [readprint.com] (I did the other night, stayed up all night in fact. Yeah yeah, get out more, but if I did that I wouldn't be a Slashdot reader!).
I also highly recommend that, when the reader has finished the book, they do a little mental excercise in matching the animals to the actual people involved in the rise of Stalinist Russia.
Bear in mind that Orwell was writing before the events of the cold war, as far as I can tell the book ends here [tcnj.edu]. Which brings us neatly back to what the parent is referring to:
A little off-topic, but what's a threaded conversation system for?
Isreli Laws require Some experience (Score:5, Informative)
But i don't think you appreciate the situation with Israeli documents: they are the most popular forged documents in the world right now: our passports are the easiest to mangle with, and because many countries trust Israeli passports, it's the most bought passport in the black market. Even the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs issued several rules to disencourage Israeli tourists from selling their passports... Our IDs are also quite popular, since we still have problems of women trafficking...
And about terrorism... well, i doubt anybody actually thinks this system will have anything to do with that. There are a very few actual cases, compared with the total, where Israeli citizens Arabs were involved in terrorist activity...
And the last comment i have on this issue, is that in the end, friends, it all comes down to money. Some CEO, with a security system, is related to some government official, and is going to rip off the treasury, when he accidentally of course, win the auction for creating the system. At least that was true for many other security related systems in Israel, the ones that did not go through the defense industry.
Hope I shed some light.
Nothing to see here (Score:1, Informative)
That database already exist - every Israeli citizen who served in the army - the majority of population - already have his/her picture, fingerprints and other biometric data on file. So this will only affect people who did not serve in the army.
Plus Israel is different from other democracies: It's very small and everybody know everybody - there is special relationship between people there. Do you know of any other country that would let a convicted murderer of a 4 year old girl for the remains of it's 2 soldiers?
And to the people who would like to blame rabbis for this "conspiracy" - genetic information is inadmissible in the rabbinic court, last time I've checked.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Almost completely irrelevant! (Score:5, Informative)
Brace yourself, I'm going to be giving you a bit of the history of Jewish movements.
Reform and Conservative Jews barely even exist in Israel. In fact, if you talked to an average Israeli about the "Masorti" (Conservative) or "Reformi/Progressive" (Reform) movements, they probably would have to look them up on Google. This isn't because Israelis are crazy-religious; most Israeli Jews call themselves "Chiloni" (translates as "secular").
Instead, it happened because the Reform movement in specific and the Conservative movement along with it have, historically, opposed Zionism up until the 1980s or 1990s, at which point they accepted that Israel will continue existing, and only began openly and strongly advocating Zionism to their own members in the 2000s. I was raised Reform, I know this stuff for a fact.
"Why?" you ask. Well, the Reform movement formed because Jews wanted to walk, talk, eat, and act like the German and American Gentiles among whom they lived without having to actually convert to Christianity; they were extremist secular Jews who sought to call their secularism a form of religion. The Modern Orthodox movement then formed to oppose the Reform Jews, and the Conservative movement formed to find a middle ground between the Orthodox and Reform approaches. Since the Reform had given up on the whole idea of Jews as an ethnicity or nation, and the Conservative (like the Orthodox) wanted the Messiah to come before we got a Jewish state, both movements opposed the State of Israel's formation. Hell, so did the American Orthodox.
In fact, the whole privileged position of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel came about as a political deal made by David Ben-Gurion's government to secure support for the emerging state from the old, respected Orthodox communities. Back then there were only a few hundred ultra-Orthodox yeshivah boys anyway, so not drafting them wasn't perceived as a big deal.
So we've ended up with an Israel that has three degrees of religiosity officially acknowledged:
1) Secular. The majority, who go to synagogue for the High Holidays at most and don't keep kosher laws or Shabat or anything.
2) National Religious. The Israeli Modern-Orthodox Jews who consider Orthodox Judaism and modern life reconcilable. Their actual range of practice goes from what Americans would call a very religious Conservative Judaism to internationally-acknowledged Modern Orthodoxy. They keep kosher, keep Shabat (ie: no work on Saturday, for a really broad value of "work"), and keep the laws of "family purity" (don't even fucking ask). Those three categories, in fact, form the very definition of Orthodox Judaism as commonly acknowledged by rabbis the world over.
3) Ultra-Orthodox. Crazy fundamentalists and black-hats. Since they "make the Torah their occupation" they get exemption from Army service as a part of that deal Ben-Gurion made. They live off the welfare that (AFAIK) all poor, unemployed families receive in Israel, because they don't respect secular professions and, indeed, don't respect any profession except for Rabbi. Their schools receive funding from both the religion ministry and the education ministry, which pisses off everyone else.
Now you might just see the trap the ultra-Orthodox have set for themselves ideologically. They can't live without secular or National Religious Jews (they really, really hate Arabs) to support them, and a growing number of their far-too-many children leave the fold for Army service and a normal life. The ultra-Orthodox can't take over the government because they don't even like acknowledging the government's legitimacy; they still wait for the Messiah.
So the actual chance of Israel toppling into theocracy in practice is quite low, since that would result in everyone starving to death and Big Business (Israel most certainly has Big Business) would never allow itself to be shut down by a bunch of insolent black-hats.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:3, Informative)
They most certainly are not a colony, they bought that land when it was worthless and built it up to be what it is today. But, I am 100% anti israel what with how much military aid we give them, the USS liberty incident, and that AIPAC pretty much determines who gets to be elected to public office in the US and who doesnt'.
Re:I am an Israeli (Score:1, Informative)
Das Modell sez: "The Palestinians use children as suicide bombers and soldiers."
Nice sweeping generalisation. I've been in Palestine, and I didn't run into children soldiers.
But if you want to understand how a decent kid grows up to be a fierce fighter or a suicide bomber, check out the film/documentary "Arna's Children" - it's made by Israeli jews, so that should prevent you from dismissing it based on racist predispositions against Palestinians.
Also, if you look around, there are plenty of examples of militarism being cultivated in young Israelis, and plenty of examples of settlers - including kids - behaving pretty badly by any standards.
http://ww4report.com/static/gun2.jpg
http://attendingtheworld.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/israeli-children-attacking-arab-woman.jpg
http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2006/07/img/israeli%20children%20send%20their%20love%20to%20lebanon%2002.jpg
See some jewish kids (settlers) throwing stones at civilians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBIcdoOKB9c
Palestinians kids throw stones at soldiers riding in tanks and armored vehicles.
It's left as an exercise which stone throwers are worst...
Das Modell sez: "Yeah, because they're really interested in peace after electing an organization that will wage Jihad against Israel until it is destroyed."
Hamas was elected because they offered an alternative to the corrupt Fatah. Also, Hamas has softened its stance over the recent years, and has offered a long term truce to Israel.
But if you insist on not understanding why Hamas was elected instead of Fatah, you are welcome to stay ignorant. But may I suggest you take off your blindfold and do a little research beyond reading zionist literature. ... do you seriously think there wouldn't be violent resistance if the Chinese invaded the US to colonize it? Why are you surprised if there's violent resistance to Israeli colonization of Palestine?
All that to say that addressing problems on the ground - i.e. ending the colonization of Palestine - is going to be way better than biometrics to improve security for everyone.
Re:You would think that they would learn from hist (Score:2, Informative)
Dude, it's not the Israeli Jews who will suffer here. It's the indigenous population. The Palestinians.
The Palestinians are not the indigenous population - the Jews were there long before them. The Arabs arrived after Mohamed united the Arab tribes (around 700 CE) in what is now called Saudi Arabia. The Arabs arrived by force. They conquered, raped, pillaged and looted. It is the Arabs who are the colonial power. The Arabs are not native to Israel (or Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria...).