Explainers

This is the third part of Understanding Identity Systems. Read Part 1: Why ID?, and Part 2: Discrimination and Identity. Biometrics Biometrics are the physiological and behavioural characteristics of individuals. This could be fingerprints, voice, face, retina and iris patterns, hand geometry, gait

This is the second part of Understanding Identity Systems. Read Part 1: Why ID?, and Part 3: The Risks of ID. The existing identity landscape Every country has an existing landscape of ways in which people can identify themselves. This can include an existing ID card system, but also a range from

Introduction Of all the data-intensive initiatives that a government can introduce, some of the largest are ID systems. They have implications across a broad range of human and civil rights. How do we begin to critique an ID system, to begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses? There are a

In the digital economy there is a trend towards corporate concentration. This is true for social media platforms, search engines, smart phone operating systems, digital entertainment, or online retailers. Meanwhile, the way in which market dominance is measured traditionally does not always capture

What is an IMSI catcher? An IMSI catcher is an intrusive piece of technology that can be used to locate and track all mobile phones that are switched on in a certain area. An IMSI catcher does this by ‘pretending’ to be a mobile phone tower - tricking your phone into connecting to the IMSI-catcher

Phone networks are divided between two networks: the physical and the mobile. The physical runs on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that serves your home phone. Mobile networks are dominant in the age of communication and are used to relay mobile communications to the PSTN. The most