Israeli Knesset Approves Biometric Database Law 303
Lord Duran writes "The Israeli Knesset approved a bill that will require every Israeli citizen to submit a visual scan of their face and a biometric scan of their fingerprints to a national database. I, for one, fail to see how this is anything but evil. TFA mentions the Israeli census was breached — I'd like to point out, for comparison, that it's still freely available on your peer-to-peer file sharing network of choice."
Evil? (Score:1, Informative)
So its really not that bad, unless you really want to live off the grid or something.
Re:Old news (Score:4, Informative)
"Biometric passports are established throughout Europe since years back."
As an Irish citizen currently living in Belgium, I have to say I don't think this is true. I don't know a single person in either country with a biometric passport.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:3, Informative)
In case you're wondering, this isn't a whole lot different than a driver's license database. There are *some*, but the wording is slashdot hype here.
Re:Evil? (Score:4, Informative)
What central location?
We did that for our kids.
The central location? The file cabinet in my home office. They only made one fingerprint card per kid, which they gave to us.
Remember, this was in the early '90s, at the tail end of the child abduction hysteria (yeah, it's still around but not as strong).
We were told to keep the card, and put a small clip of the kids' hair into a mini-ziploc, and store it with the card.
Different country, different tradeoffs (Score:2, Informative)
Every country strikes its between the privacy of its citizens and the security of its citizens. In Israel, due to its circumstances, the balance is more heavily tilted toward security over privacy. In every country of which I am aware, military service involves sacrificing some level of freedom and privacy. In Israel, almost every non-Arab citizen of the country serves in the army, and of course that service requires photographs, fingerprints, DNA sampling, etc. already. So this is not much different than status quo in Israel, and I would not call it "evil."
Re:Old news (Score:2, Informative)
You don't need a central database to have biometric passports/id cards. All you need is to store their hashes on the card and that would be compared to the person in question.
This is the only thing required of a biometric card.
Re:It's Israel (Score:3, Informative)
They were not offered a place to stay, Palenstinian land and buildings are usurped using the progressive tactic of:
1. Build border settlements
2. Whine about rocket attacks
3. Move border out of range of rockets
Wash, rinse, repeat. This is why the illegal settlements are such a sore point in the issue; they are the mechanism by which Israel is stealing the entire area that was the Palestinian state. Just look at a map from 1948 and a map from today. If you have time, check the map every decade between, you'll see Israel increasing steadily in area.
That's just it; the Palenstinians contend that Israel is not only violating their sovereignty, but displacing it physically by pushing their country into a smaller and smaller area. Gaza and the West Bank are becoming more and more overpopulated as the Palestinian lands shrink, effectively making them concentration camps.
Say what you want about Hamas. They were elected fairly, in elections overseen by Jimmy Carter. Whatever you, the UN or your government may think of them, they are the democratically elected party, and they were elected mainly because the previous group who did not support direct violence fell out of favour because Israel refused to negotiate with them. This fuelled support for Hamas. Now that Hamas are in Israel strangely wants to talk to Fatah again.
Smells like Israel just wants a belligerent neighbor so they can keep pointing at them and playing victim all the while dredging military aid from the US by the billions.
Parent rather insightful (Score:3, Informative)
Bin Laden, is what Donald Trump calls "a member of the lucky sperm club" (Trump himself is a member) - someone who was born into a very rich family. Now, I don't know about you folks, but if I were born into a rich family I'd get into the family business, become a full-time Linux hacker, do charity work - like help Palesinians maybe?, or even try being a jet set playboy. NOT killing civilians to get the Satan out of the Holy Land.
Bin Laden is so full of hate that he can't think clearly - he's basically insane with rage. He could have channeled that into a productive rage - use his resources to show American and Israeli injustices towards the Palestinians and Arab injustices towards the Palestinians. He could have been the World's greatest peaceful champion of Islam and shown the World what Islam is about.
But he didn't.
He turned to violence and hate.
The US turned him into that one might say. I'd like to point out that he's a grown man and can think for himself. Blaming the US is complete horseshit.
Re:It's Israel (Score:5, Informative)
Your bias is showing through. You are identifying one group by religion and one by nationality. It should either be:
"You can blame the Israelis for persecuting the Palestinians".
Or
"You can blame the Jews for persecuting the Muslims"
Re:It's Israel (Score:3, Informative)
You call them terrorists, they call them freedom fighters. It's a matter of perspective. Get some.
Total misdirection; a typical tactic of the pro-Israel mob. In 1948 when Israel was declared to exist (it did not declare independence, as it did not exist prior to that), it immediately enacted Jewish favoring laws, and the Irgun and Haganah (which would later become the IDF) harassed and threatened the Palestinians so that they left out of fear. There was a recent exhibit in Melbourne where Palestinian families told how they lost their homes as the borders of Israel creep outward, displacing the people as they go. Most Palestinians do not have Israeli citizenship, and so as the borders move, so must they. Trouble is, their houses do not. Many told stories of being able to look over barbed wire fences and actually see people living in the house that they had to abandon only a few years earlier.
Dunno. How about you tell me about the US being led by people like Colin Powell, who willfully lied to the world about WMDs in order to start an illegal, unpopular. Tell me about GW Bush whose family fortunes are essentially based on war. Tell me about Henry Kissinger who has some kind of fetish for ruining South American economies for fun and relaxation. Tell me about Cheyney lobbying Congress to ensure that his Halliburton cronies got the lions share of the Iraqi war loot.
Then also talk to me about Israel holding a big ceremony celebrating the Irgun terrorists who bombed the King David hotel [wikipedia.org].
Israel is a state founded with violence. Its borders were carved out by the illegal violence perpetrated by the Irgun and Haganah. Live by the sword, die by the sword. If Israel wants to rule by virtue of being the stronger party, that's fine. But at least be man enough to admit the desire to rule by might. Don't do it and whine the whole time when others challenge that type of rule.
Also, tell me who the terrorists are given a) relative body counts between Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians b) the fact that Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country while pointing vociferously at any other country that violates them (hey, either you support the UN or you don't, but you don't get to point at violators when you yourself are the biggest violator) and c) Israel's continual policy of setting up illegal settlements right along the border and then moving the border just a bit more.
Sorry, Israel is *not* above reproach. Far, far from it.
Re:Slashdot "Hype" (Score:4, Informative)
RealID was a horrible idea, many states refused to do it...it is dead in the water as far as I can tell.
Nope, it was passed into law. All the states requested an extension, so the deadline for implementation was pushed back to the end of March 2008 and then again to the end of December 2009. Since then, 20 states have become compliant, 14 have passed legislation prohibiting their DMV departments from complying, and the remaining 16 are somewhere in between. The DHS has offered the 30 non-compliant states an extension till May 2011 provided they implement a certain number of the requirements. If they don't, then all the residents of those states will have need a passport to fly starting January 1st. I do have to wonder the DHS would really risk implementing this during holiday travels, but that is the plan as of now.
I got this info from our state's Real ID FAQ [state.nm.us](PDF) - it is probably on Wikipedia as well.
Re:It's Israel (Score:4, Informative)
short historical recap: The land of Israel has been the homeland of the people of Israel (nowadays known as Jews) for about 3300 years. The Israelis had independence in the countery for almost 1000 years. The temple, the worldwide center of God worship, stood on the temple mount for a total of 830 years. There has been Israelis living in the land of Israel for over 2280 years, icluding the past 2 millenia. Hardly anyone lived there there in the 19th century. Then suddenly there's an increasing movement of Israelis and Arabs into the country, Arabs at higher numbers than Israelis so that by 1948 the Arabs in the country outnumber the Israelis 2 to 1. The Israelis mainly kept to themselves, but the Arabs attacked Israeli towns during their rebellion against the French in ~1921, and performed pogroms against the Israelis in many areas in the country in 1929. The Israelis established a self-defence organization called Hagana (which literally means "defense"). A group broke off called Etzel (which is an acronym for "Nation Military Organization") and a group broke off those called Lechi (acronym for "Warriors of the Liberty of Israel"). The Hagana only did self defence, but the Etzel and Lechi also retaliated and in some cases took the initiative in the hoatilities. in 1936 the Arabs rebelled against the British but have also targeted the Israelis until 1939, when the rebellion was quelched. in 1947 the UN decided to partition the western bank of Israel between the Arabs and the Israelis. Hostilities continued. Months later Israel declared independence, and two days later was attacked by 7 Arab countries, only 4 of which share borders with the state of Israel. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt absorbed the lands the UN allocated to the "Arab Country", a country which has never existed in the first place. The PLO was formed in 1964, and it's foundation was the first time anyone claimed the existence of a Palestinian nation.
And an Ironic anecdote: Palestine is an Arab mispronunciation of the Hebrew word Plishti, which in English means "Invader".
But I guess no one cares. Supporting the Invaders, whatever their identity and claims, is alway good when the people they are assaulting are Israeli.
PS I might have been off by a year or two here and there in the dates.