[LACNIC/Seguridad] Argentina: Datos biometricos en pasaporte

[Fernando Gont]

FYI

Fuente:
<http://www.argentinaindependent.com/socialissues/humanrights/when-a-finger-is-not-just-a-finger/>
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When a Finger is Not Just a Finger
by Kyle Younker, 23 October 2012.

In a new policy, the hundreds of thousands of babies born each year in
Argentina will receive DNIs (nationals identity cards) within two weeks
of being born. Each one will have their fingerprints and faces scanned
digitally, most of them at just one day old.

This procedure is spreading throughout hospitals, and it’s just one part
of Argentina’s sprawling, multi-ministerial push to collect and store
the biometric data – fingerprints and face scans, for now – of all
Argentines and visitors to the country’s territory. Using scanners for
the renewal of DNIs and passports, and at border crossings and
hospitals, the data of all 40 million Argentines will eventually be
consolidated and accessible in real time through the Federal System of
Biometric Identification for Security, or SIBIOS, approved last November
and currently being implemented across the country.

Proponents of the measure say it will produce a qualitative leap in
security through the rapid and precise identification of Argentines and
increase the quality of government services, while critics say it
emphasises security over civil liberties and gives dangerous and
unchecked powers of surveillance to the Argentine government.

“The trend in Argentina and other Latin American countries is toward
updating national ID systems of decades past and moving to biometrics
without a public debate on the privacy and civil liberties implications
of these proposals,” says Katitza Rodriguez, the International Rights
Director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San
Francisco-based non-profit that defends digital rights.

As passports and DNIs are renewed through the Argentine National
Registry of Persons (Renaper), the data collected is integrated into
SIBIOS. Similarly, the “Year Zero” DNI, mandated in December of last
year, requires that photos and fingerprints be taken of new-born babies.

Mandatory scanners were outfitted at the Buquebus ferry terminal and
Ezeiza and Aeroparque airports by the National Migrations Office, to be
expanded to the rest of the country’s border crossings. Only holders of
diplomatic passports can pass without scrutiny, according to the
office’s disposition from earlier this year. As of July, the three
terminals had collected nearly three million samples.

And SIBIOS, implemented by executive decree with no congressional
review, creates an integrated repository under the auspices of the
Ministry of Security, through which different national and provincial
bodies will be able to conduct inquiries – a biometrics system of
unprecedented scope in the world, experts say.

Security and Identity

The central aims of SIBIOS are to enhance and facilitate security
procedures and protect the identity of Argentines, according to Pedro
Janices, director of the National Office of Technology and Information
and the public face of biometrics in Argentina.

People line up to get new DNIs and Passports in the mobile vans that pop
up at large events and festivals around town. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

In addition to identification of criminals and unidentified persons with
portable 3G devices, the system will be used for e-government
initiatives. Argentina’s Social Security Administration, ANSES, and its
tax agency, AFIP, for instance, are considered emblematic for the
digitisation of both internal and external transactions.

“There were big concerns about identity theft,” such as people earning a
pension under a false name or engaging in tax fraud, says Janices, who
helped to develop biometrics within the Ministry of the Interior,
starting in 2003. “We want to make sure you are who you say you are, in
all situations.”

Janices was the only Latin American representative to participate in
last year’s biometrics conference in Arlington, Virginia, sponsored by
the National Defence Industrial Association, the largest trade group
representing defence contractors in the US.

“Argentina is at the forefront of the technology,” says Brad Wing, the
biometrics standards coordinator at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US. Under Janices, Argentina
is even developing new guidelines for integrated dental forensics, he
says, and is one of a few entities in the world to adopt the latest and
most advanced standard for integrated networks.

The technology will help Argentina fight organised crime around its
borders, which have been signalled as transit zones for narcotics and
other illicit trades.

“The big crimes these days tend to be international: drug trafficking,
trafficking in persons, and terrorism,” says Ricardo Saenz, a federal
prosecutor and consultant for the National Programme for Critical
Infrastructure and Cybersecurity. “The new system is most likely to be
used in these matters.”

Mild Resistance

Although SIBIOS did not provoke widespread resistance within Argentina,
civil liberties advocates have voiced strong dissent, saying it
facilitates espionage by a government lacking oversight, and represents
the genuflection of individual liberties under the quest for security.

Argentina’s law of habeas data, passed in 2000, allows citizens to
correct, update, or destroy personal information held on public and
private databases.

Even so, some wonder why collecting so much information about citizens
is necessary in the first place. “It’s worrying,” says Kai Rannenberg, a
professor of business informatics at Goethe University of Frankfurt, via
telephone, upon reading about the characteristics of Argentina’s system.

Rannenberg was a director of the Future of Identity in the Information
Society, a European Union-funded think tank that studied the
implications of having biometrics information included in European
passports, and concluded that technical flaws would decrease security
and privacy, and make identity theft more likely.

Storing biometric data of all citizens without prior approval and making
it generally available for criminal investigations, “assumes suspicions
about people where there’s no reason for suspicion,” he says. “A good
question might be: Why does the Argentine government so mistrust its
people?”

Biometric data collection process in Argentina from birth with face and
fingerprint scans. DNIs and Passports are renewed via the Argentine
National Registry of Persons. All this data is stored in SIBIOS, the
System of Biometric Identification for Security. (Image by Estudio Bote)

Germans have national ID cards but each citizen chooses whether they
want to store fingerprint information on them. An attempt to enact a
national ID scheme in the UK was blocked in 2010 because of privacy
concerns. And opposition from civil liberties advocates has prevented
such a programme in the US – perhaps ironically, since the US has been
the source of diplomatic pressure for stringent surveillance and
counterterrorism laws.

State Controls

Similar concerns have been raised over who will guarantee that
biometrics data is protected, and not subject to external sabotage or
the whims of a government that is often seen as using state resources to
condition political enemies.

“There has been a systematic weakening of state control organisms,
including the Syndicate General Office,” or SIGEN, the organism
responsible for auditing the government, says Hernan Charosky, the
former director of Poder Ciudadano, a watchdog NGO. SIGEN stopped
publishing its audits online several years ago, and has been wrangling
with the Auditor General’s Office – controlled by the opposition Radical
party – over access to information, says Charosky.

Indeed, the misuse of technology for spying would not be new in the
region – and has raised suspicions about government intentions.

“Time and again, we have heard the dubious rhetorical argument that
databases are needed to fight against crime and increase security,” says
Rodriguez, of EFF. But massive databases “remain vulnerable for
exploitation not only by criminals or identity thieves but by
unaccountable government officials themselves.”

In Colombia, US-provided surveillance equipment was used by elite
security forces – under the guise of fighting narco-traffickers – to spy
on political opponents in what became known as the ‘Las Chuzadas’
scandal. Mexican authorities have begun using high technology to track
and intercept telecommunications with no judicial oversight. And earlier
this year, a spy programme known as Proyecto X within Argentina’s
Gendarmería attempted to gather information on union leaders and
activists that were protesting layoffs at a Kraft plant.

The fears of civil rights activists in their purest form are an enhanced
version of Proyecto X: that police will be able to attend an
anti-government protest with a portable scanner and, using biometrics,
immediately know sensitive information about those present.

“Privacy is particularly crucial for our country since throughout our
long history of social and political movements, calls for action have
often taken to the streets,” says Beatriz Busaniche of ViaLibre, a local
foundation that promotes freedom on the internet.

International Watchlists

The extent to which data is shared internationally is not immediately
clear, but US embassy cables disclosed by Wikileaks reveal pressure for
countries in the region to sign bilateral or multilateral watchlist
agreements, and collect biometric data on political leaders and other
persons of interest.

A 2006 cable from the US embassy in Asunción reads: “According to the
director of immigration, he welcomes any and all watchlist information,
to include political dissidents that the [US government] may be able to
provide.”

“There has been very little public information about the existence of
data sharing and watchlist initiatives in Latin American countries,”
says Rodriguez. “There is an urgent need to cast light on the existence
and use of these secretive databases.”

Another cable from the US embassy in Buenos Aires disclosed by Wikileaks
reveals that political leaders were already expecting little resistance
to biometrics measures within Argentina. In 2007, then-US Attorney
General Alberto Gonzalez met with then-Argentine Interior Minister
Anibal Fernández. When Gonzalez noted that a portion of the society in
the US would be opposed to biometrics ID cards, Fernández replied that
he faced “no such public concern” in Argentina. So far, he has been right.
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(*) El titulo da para la broma fácil. :-) Y los comentarios de al final
del articulo ayudan en tal dirección. :-)

Saludos cordiales,
-- 
Fernando Gont
e-mail: fernando en gont.com.ar || fgont en si6networks.com
PGP Fingerprint: 7809 84F5 322E 45C7 F1C9 3945 96EE A9EF D076 FFF1