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Biometric identity systems: "Often it is a question of life and death"

2021-07-08T12:26:56.080Z


Identification by iris scan or fingerprint: Many states and humanitarian organizations use biometric ID systems. They should facilitate access to aids - but have risky side effects.


Enlarge image

Biometric processes, here in India, are supposed to make it easier to identify people - it does not always work properly

Photo: Jonathan Torgovnik / Getty Images

Rebecca was pregnant and had bleeding and back pain when she reached the health center in the Ugandan city of Kayunga.

But the staff refused to accept the young woman because she could not produce a National Identity Card (NIC), a biometric identification document that all citizens of Uganda should have.

Cases like these occur again and again, as the recently published report "Chased Away and Left to Die" shows: Uganda's state digital identity system "Ndaga Muntu" has led to "mass exclusion," warn the New's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice York University School of Law and the Ugandan organizations Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) and Unwanted Witness. Above all, poorer and already disadvantaged population groups such as women or the elderly are affected.

"We have calculated that a third of the adult population does not have a national identity document and therefore has no access to a range of government and private services," says Christiaan van Veen, director of the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at New York University School of Law.

Millions of citizens are waiting in Uganda for their cards to be issued.

Many cards also have errors - correcting them costs fees that many cannot afford and often involves long journeys.

In addition: the biometric verification regularly fails;

especially common among elderly Ugandans whose fingerprints have been worn out by handicraft.

Not only in Uganda, but in many countries around the world, but also in refugee camps, services such as the distribution of food, money transfers or access to health care are now linked to digital identity systems in which people use biometric processes such as fingerprint comparisons, facial or iris -Scans are identified. But what governments, international organizations and local non-governmental organizations see as a technical solution to check people's identities and their entitlements to services more quickly and to make processes more efficient and transparent, according to critics, harbors data protection risks and in some cases exacerbates existing inequalities.

In 2015, when the UN member states adopted the global sustainability goals (SDGs), they agreed that they wanted to achieve “legal identity for all” by 2030.

Since then, organizations like the World Bank have been massively promoting the spread of digital IDs.

The World Bank Initiative Identification for Development (ID4D),

which is also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, advises states on how to implement such systems and supports some of the projects financially - as in the case of »Ndaga Muntu«, which the World Bank describes as technologically advanced and successful.

According to the # ID4D Global Dataset, 161 countries worldwide had digital ID systems by 2018. Yet, according to the initiative, around a billion people around the world continue to have problems proving their identity: “They have difficulty accessing basic services - including access to finance and even a mobile phone - and may miss out on important economic opportunities such as formal employment or ownership of a registered company. "

Ideally, digital IDs should lead to better social, economic and sometimes also political participation. But those who cannot produce proof of identity face "social death," as van Veen warns - or worse. In Uganda, according to him, at least 50,000 of the roughly 200,000 citizens over 80 years of age have no or no correct ID and are therefore not entitled to money transfers for this age group: »This is often a question of life and death, as they have no other source of income have «, says van Veen. As the Ugandan Ministry of Health announced in March 2021, people with ID should also primarily receive a corona vaccination - the authority only withdrew its announcement after a lawsuit.

Digital activists had also sued - albeit unsuccessfully - against "Aadhaar" in India, the largest biometrics program in the world with more than 1.2 billion registered citizens. You criticize the close-knit mass surveillance by companies and the state. According to the Ugandan government, »Ndaga Muntu« was also introduced as a national security system to protect borders, internal security and identify criminals: »So the main drive was to get a better overview of where the population is and what they are doing and whoever tries to cross the border, «says van Veen.

The EU is also pressing for African governments to better control their populations and refugee flows: "The West wants to curb migration and sees digital ID systems as an instrument for this," believes van Veen.

The EU's Post-Cotonou Agreement with 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, which is due to come into force in autumn 2021, calls for stronger migration controls, better registration systems and biometric IDs.

In many places, aid organizations are already using technology to manage camps - and to document their own work: "Donors are pushing humanitarian aid actors to introduce biometric solutions in order to increase the efficiency, accountability and traceability of humanitarian aid," says the Danish researcher Maria-Louise Clausen.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR has already registered nine million refugees in 79 countries.

The BIMS software records and stores fingerprints, iris data and facial photos and provides refugees without ID documents with proof of identity.

According to UNHCR, BIMS can determine the identity of people within "seconds", for example when spending food.

In Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, UNHCR, local banks and the British IT company IrisGuard also equipped ATMs with an iris scanner so that refugees can withdraw money without a card or pin code.

Even purchases in the supermarket can be paid for with an iris scan.

The World Food Program (WFP) also wants to use biometrics to prevent warring parties from diverting the aid supplies intended for the needy in countries like Yemen, where a multi-front war has been raging for years and millions of people have been starving.

According to a WFP spokeswoman, 1.75 million people are so far registered in the southern areas, but only 46,000 in the north of the country.

The Houthi rebels who control the north had blocked the WFP from collecting data there in recent years.

However, experts doubt that biometric IDs can significantly prevent misuse: While the systems can track the issue of goods and money to recipients of aid, the greatest fraud occurs beforehand, in the supply chain.

Refugees and beneficiaries themselves also have too little control over their data.

In their tech projects, states or organizations cooperate with private IT companies - it is often not transparent for people how their data is processed in detail.

Two years ago, the collaboration between the World Food Program and the controversial data analysis company Palantir sparked outrage - their list of customers also includes secret services, the police and the US immigration authority ICE.

Aid organizations have developed data protection guidelines for biometric processes and sometimes carry out technology impact assessments or tests of existing systems, but in practice there are always problems with data protection, implementation or acceptance.

Human Rights Watch is currently accusing the UN Refugee Agency of inappropriately collecting personal information such as photos and fingerprints from Rohingya minority refugees and sharing them with Bangladesh in several cases;

the local government in turn passed this on to Myanmar in order to examine repatriation options - to the country from which hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had to flee from discrimination and repression, hate campaigns and massacres, including by state security forces.

"The data collection practices of the UN refugee agency contradicted its own guidelines and exposed the refugees to further risks," said Lama Fakih, crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

The UNHCR contradicts the allegations: »During the registration of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, which was carried out jointly by the UNHCR and the government of Bangladesh, each refugee family was informed of the purpose of the registration, which was primarily aimed at the Rohingya refugees To offer protection, documentation and support, «it says in a statement. Everyone was asked to consent to their data being passed on to local partners - anyone who did not allow this was nevertheless registered and also had access to services; in addition, no one is forced to return to Myanmar involuntarily.

Dragana Kaurin, who conducts research on technology and migration at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, criticizes that the new technologies would generally reinforce unequal power structures.

While asylum seekers have to provide a lot of personal data on their journey, according to Kaurin, UN organizations, border guards and other authorities often do not fully inform them of their data rights: “The refugees are only informed when necessary about why the organizations are making decisions Need data and how it is stored and protected «, criticizes Kaurin.

"That leads to an information crisis."

For her research, she interviewed a refugee who thought the border police wanted to burn his fingers - because he had never seen a fingerprint scanner and did not know what was happening.

Many migrants are also afraid that their data will be shared with governments from which they have fled: "I cannot imagine a worse worst-case scenario than what the Rohingya are currently experiencing," says Kaurin.

This contribution is part of the Global Society project

Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?

Reporters from

Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe

report under the title “Global Society”

- on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.

The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in the international section of SPIEGEL.

The project is long-term and will be supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for three years.

A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.

AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is supporting the project for three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros.

Are the journalistic content independent of the foundation?

Yes.

The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.

Do other media have similar projects?

Yes.

Big European media like "The Guardian" and "El País" have set up similar sections on their news sites with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.

Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL?

In the past few years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the “Expedition ÜberMorgen” on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project “The New Arrivals” as part of this several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been produced.

Where can I find all publications on global society?

The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the topic Global Society.

Source: spiegel

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