[LACNIC/Seguridad] Argentina: Datos biometricos en pasaporte

Arturo Servin arturo.servin en gmail.com
Vie Oct 26 08:53:15 BRST 2012


	Me pregunto cuanto tardará esa información en estar disponible
públicamente en el Internet.

	Aquí hay dos problemas, uno la privacidad de los ciudadanos y
visitantes a Argentina. Yo sigo pensando que es una falasia eso de
"Proponents of the measure say it will produce a qualitative leap in
security through the rapid and precise identification of" y es el
pretexto de los gobiernos para ejercer control.

	El segundo problema es la falta de confianza que le tenemos a los
operadores de estas bases de datos.

Slds
as

On 26/10/2012 08:10, Fernando Gont wrote:
> FYI
> 
> Fuente:
> <http://www.argentinaindependent.com/socialissues/humanrights/when-a-finger-is-not-just-a-finger/>
> (*)
> 
> 
> ---- cut here ----
> 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.
> ---- cut here ----
> 
> (*) El titulo da para la broma fácil. :-) Y los comentarios de al final
> del articulo ayudan en tal dirección. :-)
> 
> Saludos cordiales,
> 



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