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Content type: Case Study
This piece was written by Privacy International, based on publicly available information and on research by our partners at Hiperderecho
Overview
The Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) is the personal ID card recognised by the Peruvian State in any situation where a person might have to identify themselves, be it in an administrative, judicial, civil, or commercial context. The DNI also grants its holder the right to vote.
The DNI issuing and overseeing body is the Registro Nacional de…
Content type: News & Analysis
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.As seen before with regime…
Content type: Long Read
Since the September 11th attacks, decision makers across the globe have embraced overreaching surveillance technologies. The global “War on Terror” ushered in and normalized an array of invasive surveillance technologies. Collection and storage of biometrics data and the application of statistical methods to such data have been touted as uniquely suited to twenty-first century threats. Yet, biometrics technologies are not seamless, panoptic technologies that allow for perfect control. They can…
Content type: Report
National identity systems naturally implicate data protection issues, given the high volume of data necessary for the systems’ functioning.
This wide range and high volume of data implicates raises the following issues:
consent as individuals should be aware and approve of their data’s collection, storage, and use if the system is to function lawfully. Despite this, identity systems often lack necessary safeguards requiring consent and the mandatory nature of systems ignores consent…
Content type: Report
While identity systems pose grave dangers to the right to privacy, based on the particularities of the design and implementation of the ID system, they can also impact upon other fundamental rights and freedoms upheld by other international human rights instruments including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights such as the right to be free from unlawful discrimination, the right to liberty, the right to…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the consultation on the Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development. Valuable lessons have been learnt, particularly in the last few years, on the serious consequences of identity systems. We have seen challenges in court that have found that key provisions of these systems are incompatible with the right to privacy enshrined in constitutions. We have seen civil society organisations highlighting the serious risks…
Content type: News & Analysis
Unlikely as it may seem, the UN institution that has one of the greatest potential to impact upon people’s rights around the world is now the UN Statistics Division. And why is that?
Last week, they had a crucial meeting where they endorsed the UN’s Legal Identity Agenda and the UN’s Legal Identity Task Force. The stakes could hardly be higher. One of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 16.9, states that “by 2030 provide legal identity for all including free birth…
Content type: Long Read
Background
Kenya’s National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS) is a biometric database of the Kenyan population, that will eventually be used to give every person in the country a unique “Huduma Namba” for accessing services. This system has the aim of being the “single point of truth”, a biometric population register of every citizen and resident in the country, that then links to multiple databases across government and, potentially, the private sector.
NIIMS was introduced…
Content type: News & Analysis
On 30 January 2020, Kenya’s High Court handed down its judgment on the validity of the implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), known as the Huduma Namba. Privacy International submitted an expert witness testimony in the case. We await the final text of the judgment, but the summaries presented by the judges in Court outline the key findings of the Court. Whilst there is much there that is disappointing, the Court found that the implementation of NIIMS…
Content type: News & Analysis
Updated January 18th 2021
The Government of Myanmar is pushing ahead with plans to require anyone buying a mobile SIM card to be fingerprinted and hand over their ID cards, according to procurement documents circulated to prospective bidders.
The plans are a serious threat to privacy in a country lacking any data protection or surveillance laws and where minorities are systematically persecuted, and must be scrapped.
According to technical requirements developed by Myanmar’s Post and…
Content type: Long Read
By Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019
Our digital environment is changing, fast. Nobody knows exactly what it’ll look like in five to ten years’ time, but we know that how we produce and share our data will change where we end up. We have to decide how to protect, enhance, and preserve our rights in a world where technology is everywhere and data is generated by every action. Key battles will be fought over who can access our data and how they may use it. It’s time to take…
Content type: Report
This report investigates the probable effect of the proposed UK national Identity Card system on people who are marginalised, who suffer social disadvantage or exclusion, and those who are disabled. The work focuses on the biometrics element of the government’s proposals (specifically facial recognition, ngerprinting and iris scanning).
The Report provides a specific assessment of the recently published biometrics trial conducted by the UK Passport Service (UKPS), and compares these…