Activists lash out at 'Big Brother 2'

Israel's plan to create a national biometric database of fingerprints has alarmed citizens and human rights lawyers.

Avner Pinchuk, a human rights lawyer, is disturbed by the proposed database.

TEL AVIV // The headline of the photocopied news article stuck out amid the clutter of paper on Avner Pinchuk's desk. "The Big Brother will know everything," it blared in thick Hebrew script. That is exactly what has in recent days worried Mr Pinchuk, a seasoned lawyer with Israel's biggest civil rights association. Together with a group of other rights activists and lawyers, he has lashed out against an ambitious plan approved by the government on Aug 3 to create a computer database of fingerprints and digital facial images of all Israeli citizens and residents.

The government argues the storage of so-called biometrics - measures of physical attributes that are unique to every person and typically do not change - would aid in combating identity fraud, illegal immigration, terrorism and criminal and economic violations. But it would also make Israel the first western-style democracy to introduce such an exhaustive national database, Mr Pinchuk and other activists said. "We are increasingly entering a period in which we are constantly under surveillance," the 47-year-old, green-eyed lawyer said in an interview at his small office in central Tel Aviv. "You have nowhere to escape - the state and powerful bodies know everything about you."

Indeed, some Israelis nickname the biometric data bank "Big Brother 2". The plan emerged just months after the Israeli parliament passed the controversial "communications data" law, which activists said allows police a nearly free hand in obtaining personal information about citizens from cellular companies and internet providers, including the individuals or organisations whom they phoned or e-mailed and the websites in which they visited.

In a newspaper commentary last week, Boaz Okon, a former prominent district court judge, urged Israelis to "shout now" against the database plan. "The invasion into your privacy is the way the Israeli regime is trying to increase its power," he wrote. In part hyperbolic, he warned that it may be followed by a DNA database and "a permanent chip in the brain". The government bill, which needs to pass three parliamentary readings before becoming a law, calls for scanned prints of each person's index fingers and a digital facial image to be included in passports, ID cards and a central database. Currently, every Israeli resident carries a multipurpose laminated ID card in a blue plastic billfold that is used for receiving services from the government or private companies. Israeli police said the ID cards are easy to forge, and fake copies sell for as much as 3,000 shekels (Dh3,100) apiece. According to the bill, anyone refusing to provide the required biometrics faces a year's imprisonment.

Globally, while the use of biometrics for immigration and border control is becoming more commonplace, a national biometric database is not. The US, EU members and other western countries do not have universal biometric data banks, although many collect biometrics from visitors and foreign workers. According to Israeli security analysts, countries with databases containing biometrics on all their citizens include Pakistan, Indonesia and Kuwait.

Still, some privacy activists said EU countries may also introduce similar databases. An EU directive that all the region's citizens include two fingerprints in new passports starting next year will inevitably lead to national fingerprint databases and possibly a centralised European one, said Tony Bunyan of Statewatch, a civil liberties group in London. Such plans have drawn intense criticism in Europe about violating privacy as well as being technically unsafe and too costly.

In Israel, the new law hopes to combat the forgery of IDs and the registration of multiple identities, which police claim aid in terrorism as well as in criminal and economic violations. The database could also help, they said, in identifying bodies in case of a mass catastrophe or natural disaster. But security and privacy analysts said biometric ID cards could be faked as well and question the accuracy of such measurements as fingerprints. Furthermore, they said, the data bank could be exposed to internal corruption, leakage or external hacking and may even heighten the security threat by storing all citizens' identities in one place. "It's a core rule of security that you don't centralise unless you absolutely have to," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a London-based advocacy group.

But Israeli officials insist the database will be secure. "This information will be kept under the same standards as state secrets," Aryeh Bar, the director general of the interior ministry, told Yediot Aharonot, a daily newspaper, this month. He said police will access the data bank only with court permission. Still, Israeli database security has proven to be problematic. Information from the interior ministry's population registry - such as citizens' ID card numbers, addresses and dates of birth - has repeatedly been leaked to the internet. Last year, Israel's Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority mistakenly e-mailed classified information to its counterpart in Moscow about a Russian-born businessman now living in Israel. The information may have been especially sensitive because the businessman, Leonid Nevzlin, is wanted by Russian authorities for various charges, including ordering a series of high-profile killings, which he has denied.

To minimise data security risks, civil rights lawyers are asking the government to place the biometrics on a chip embedded in an ID card without storing them in a central data bank. Some suggest that officials use the already existing databases more efficiently and require every person applying for an ID card to answer a detailed questionnaire. But such activists as Mr Pinchuk worry the government's database "binge" may be unstoppable. "It may be great in terms of government efficiency - but the problem is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts in an absolute way," he said.

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