National ID Card Systems: an International Research Workshop organized by The Globalization of Personal Data Project (GPD) in association with the Surveillance Project, Queen's University, Canada, June 7-8 2007.
National ID card systems using embedded electronic chips, enabled by biometrics and dependent on registry databases are proliferating around the world, driven by diverse concerns from identity theft, terrorism, immigration control, administrative efficiency to fraud reduction. The aim of the workshop is to explore these developments by examining not only their technical and administrative dimensions but also the historical, international, comparative, and political economy aspects of new ID card systems. In particular, the workshop aims to understand how new ID processes contribute to surveillance practices, through the classification of citizens and residents according to varying criteria, thus affecting their life-chances, status and prospects. Contributions are sought that are empirically grounded but that also make reference to appropriate explanatory and critical theory.
The workshop was convened by Colin Bennett (Political Science, University of Victoria) and David Lyon (Sociology, Queen's).
The workshop is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC).
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
8:45 - 9:00 am Welcome
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
8:45 - 9:00 am Welcome
David Lyon, GPD Principal Investigator
9:00 - 10:30 am IDENTITY AND IDENTIFICATION: THEORY
Session chair: Kirstie Ball, The Open University
David Lyon: Card Cartel: An Oligopoly on the Means of Identification
Cheryl Brown: Does Culture Matter?
10:30 - 10:45 am BREAK
10:45 am - 12:30 pm COUNTRY CASE ANALYSES (I) Canada - US
Session chair: Kirstie Ball, The Open University
Krista Boa: Conceptualizations of Identity and Biometrics in National Identity Systems
Andrew Clement*, Krista Boa*, Simon Davies** and Gus Hosein**
* Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto
** Policy Engagement Network, London School of Economics: Toward National ID Policies for Canada: Federal Initiatives and Alternative Principles
Kelly Gates: National ID through the Back Door: The US Real ID Act
12:30 - 1:30 pm LUNCH
1:30 - 3:00 pm COUNTRY CASE ANALYSES (II) UK
Session chair: Elia Zureik, Queen's University
Scott Thompson: Separating the Sheep from the Goats: The UK's National Registration Program and Social Sorting in the Pre-Electronic Era
Charles Raab: Dilemmas of Identity and Identification
3:00 - 3:30 pm BREAK
3:30- 5:00 pm COUNTRY CASE ANALYSES (III) Australia-France
Session chair: Elia Zureik, Queen's University
Laurent Laniel and Pierre Piazza: The INES Biometric Card and the Politics of National Identity Assignment in France
Dean Wilson and Peter Holland: Identity, Power and Australia's Access Card
6:00 pm DINNER (Treasure Island Marina [Hope and Anchor Restaurant], Hwy 2 E, just past Abbey Dawn Road)
Policy Studies Room 202
Queen's University
9:00 - 10:30 am COUNTRY CASE ANALYSES (IV) South Africa -- UAE
Session chair: L. Lynda Harling Stalker, GPD Post-doctoral Fellow
Keith Breckenridge: The Politics of Standards: Understanding the HANIS Debacle
Zeinab Shalhoub: Population ID Systems in the Middle East
10:30 - 11:00 am BREAK
11:00 - 12:30 COUNTRY CASE ANALYSES (V) Japan -- India
Session chair: L. Lynda Harling Stalker, GPD Post-doctoral Fellow
Midori Ogasawara: "Dataveillance" Determines Who Deserves Citizenship: National Identification Systems in Japan
12:30 - 1:30 pm LUNCH
1:30 - 3:00 pm INTERNATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGY REGIMES
Session chair: Mark Salter, University of Ottawa
Jeffrey Stanton et al: ICAO and the Biometric RFID Passport
Willem Maas: The European Health Insurance Card
3:00 - 3:15 pm BREAK
3:15 - 4:45 pm CRITICAL APPROACHES
Session chair: Mark Salter, University of Ottawa
Ben Muller: Membership has its Privileges: Insecure/Suspect Identities and the Biometric State
Simone Browne: E-Racing: Cards, Symbolic Insiders and the Case of the Certificate of Indian Status
4:45 - 5:30 pm WRAP-UP AND CONFERENCE SUMMARY: Colin Bennett
7:00 pm DINNER - Pan Chancho, 44 Princess Street
With no formal session arranged for today it may be possible for participants remaining in town to take a bus tour around Kingston or a boat trip on the St Lawrence River.
Colin Bennett, Department of Political Studies, University of Victoria
Biography of Colin Bennett
Colin Bennett received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wales, and his Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 1986 he has taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, where he is now Professor. From 1999-2000, he was a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 2007 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at University of California, Berkeley. His research has focused on the comparative analysis of surveillance technologies and privacy protection policies at the domestic and international levels. In addition to numerous scholarly and newspaper articles, he has published three books: Regulating Privacy: Data Protection and Public Policy in Europe and the United States (Cornell University Press, 1992); Visions of Privacy: Policy Choices for the Digital Age (University of Toronto Press, 1999, with Rebecca Grant); The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in the Digital Age (Ashgate Press, 2003; MIT Press, 2006 with Charles Raab).
Keith Breckenridge, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
The South African Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) was first introduced in 1996, many years before governments in the West began to experiment with the idea of universal biometric registration. Yet it is still not implemented. This year, like many before it, the state is promising to implement the system by Christmas. HANIS has its roots in the South African obsession with fingerprinting as a short-cut remedy to administrative incapacity and corruption; it also highlights the special power of financial systems in shaping government practice in the late 20th century. HANIS has been plagued with political, administrative and technical troubles from the outset, and this paper will trace these delays and bungling, making comparisons with the growing, and largely invisible, power of privatized smart card systems that have been in use here, and under constant revision, over the same period. These private financial systems of welfare grant delivery, for example, have long overtaken the state's efforts. A parallel expansion of credit history data analysis has taken place over the same period, and the paper will explore the links between the proposed state identity card, credit cards and credit risk analysis. In the latter two areas the South African banks have supported dramatic innovations, and an expansion of centralised systems of identification and credit risk assessment. In this sense South Africa is an interesting mix of advanced capitalist surveillance and ham-fisted bureaucracy. The question, given the long-running South African obsession with universal registration, is whether or not this is the likely result of all contemporary biometric identification systems?
Biography of Keith Breckenridge
Coming soon.
Cheryl Brown, University of North Carolina
National ID card debate and development after the September 11 terrorism attacks spawned deliberation about the erosion of citizens' rights in countries previously protecting data and communications privacy. While countries have proposed measures for national ID cards, citizens' anticipation of the cards as a surveillance tool have varied according to the historical culture of identification of citizens and the legal system of implementing new laws and policies. In Malaysia, for example, citizens expressed privacy concerns about the development of MyKad, a national ID card proposed to facilitate government efficiency. The country's history of national ID cards and policies to insure surveillance of insurgent groups, lends an environment not foreign to the concept of ID cards. Debates in the United States and the United Kingdom, however, have questioned the governments' use of data maintained in a centralized system and fear a breach of fiduciary trust of confidentiality. How do the cultural factors of the different political systems matter in developing ID cards? Have semi-democracies, liberal democracies, and communist systems begun to mirror each other in the application of ID cards?
This paper examines cultural factors to enhance our understanding of patterns of behavior in developing ID cards and using the cards. We will explore six variablesâ€â€policy discourse culture, legal culture, democratization culture, diversity culture, communications culture, and trust cultureâ€â€in the development of ID cards in China, Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to assess the convergence of cultural dimensions of governments in implementing national ID cards.
Biography of Cheryl Brown
Dr. Cheryl L. Brown, an associate professor of political science, teaches Internet Law and Policy, Cyberspace and Politics, Digital Forensics and Policy, and Politics of China at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States. She received a National Science Foundation award to study the formation of networks in cyberspace in the age of electronic government and studied in the Internet Law Program of the Berkman Center for Internet Law & Society at Harvard Law School. Dr. Brown has conducted extensive research on information and communication technology in the Asia Pacific and published an article on smart card technology for e-government.
Simone Browne, OISE, University of Toronto
What does it mean to 'digitize' a nation? Often the rationale behind National ID card systems is said to be administrative efficiency in the management of risk. This paper seeks to situate these cards emergence within a historical, social and economic context that is not only about increasing securitization but also about an intensification of computerized data collection by the state and by the private sector. In order to discuss the racially specific ways in which these technologies are often mediated, this paper looks at two sites: Haiti's 2006 presidential election facilitated by the issuance of biometric voter identification cards; and a pilot project by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada on chip-ready Certificate of Indian Status cards. Such a discussion considers colonial governmentalities, and the market-oriented governing principles of neo-liberalism as an enabling logic of these technologies in order to understand this historical moment of the integration of the military, private and the state in for-profit identity management. One of my arguments is that the ID card is not only about the bureaucratic governance of a population but also about the self-making of the responsible subject. As a methodological approach, this paper uses discourse analysis to understand the practices by which such technologies get invested with meaning.
Biography of Simone Browne
Coming soon.
Andrew Clement*, Krista Boa*, Simon Davies** and Gus Hosein**
* Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto
** Policy Engagement Network, London School of Economics
Canada has publicly declined so far to develop a national ID card system.
However, there are a number of policy declarations and projects at the federal
level, notably a pending biometric passport and other measures aimed at better
'securing' the Canada-US border, that are heading in this direction.
This paper provides an overview and critique of these leading Canadian federal
initiatives in the area of identity documentation and management. While we
highlight some of their principal shortcomings, we aim mainly to provide positive
options and alternative approaches to help minimize risks and achieve an identity
policy framework that meets the legitimate governmental objectives while
maintaining the primacy of citizen needs and rights appropriate to a free and
democratic society.
In particular, we offer a citizen centred conception of identity that goes beyond a
focus on unique individuation to address the central status and entitlement
objectives. We also propose a suite of identity principles based on a range of
relevant perspectives that can guide development. From a legal/constitutional
perspective and drawing upon the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we
postulate 'identity integrity' and related rights as fundamental to citizen identity.
With a more organizational focus we extend the 10 fair information practice
principles found in PIPEDA, first by incorporating explicit reference to identity
judgments and then by adding several more that address specific identity issues.
We also offer desiderata for the properties of an identity system as well as how it
is developed.
Biography of Andrew Clement
Andrew Clement is a Professor in the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, where he coordinates the Information Policy Research Program and is the Director of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Knowledge Media Design. He has had longstanding research and teaching interests in the social implications of information/communication technology and human-centred systems development. His recent research has focused on public information policy, internet use in everyday life, digital identity constructions, public participation in information/communication infrastructures development, and community networking. Clement is the principal investigator of the SSHRC INE funded Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking? (CRACIN.ca) and the Digital Identities Construction project as well as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner funded CAN-ID - Visions for Canada's Identity Policy, research project.
Kelly Gates, Queen's College, City University of New York (CUNY)
This paper examines the effort to devise a national identification system in the United States "through the back door" by federally mandating the standardization and integration of state driver's license administration. The Real ID Act, signed into law by President Bush in May 2005, compels individual states, through their Department of Motor Vehicle offices, to serve as administrators of a national identification system. Through the mandates of the Real ID Act, proponents of the policy are attempting to circumvent widespread political opposition to a national ID by making state driver's licenses more reliable forms of de facto national identification. More broadly, the Act represents one among a range of efforts on the part of the federal government to develop a more sophisticated, dispersed and integrated bureaucratic surveillance and access control network, further tipping the imbalance of power between individuals and the institutions that govern them. In addition, the effort to implement the Real ID Act provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between the technical and the political: how political authorities attempt to render governmental strategies in technical form, and the "technical difficulties" that result. In attempting to make Real ID a working system, we witness the conflicts and tensions that inevitably emerge in the profoundly political project of state security. Standardizing and integrating state driver's license systems in order to transform them into a national identification system is a process fraught with problems, and one that will inevitably result in a highly imperfect system that necessarily embodies the politics of inclusion and exclusion inherent in state security strategies and their corresponding surveillance practices.
Biography of Kelly Gates
Kelly Gates is an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. She teaches courses on media law & policy, the history of media technologies, and theories of the information society. She has published several articles on biometrics, and is currently writing a book on the politics of facial recognition technology.
Zeinab Karake Shalhoub, American University of Sharjah
On June 9th, 2006, a new law giving the Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) responsibility for the introduction of a modern Population Register and ID Card system for all citizens and residents was proclaimed and signed by the President of the United Arab Emirates (Federal Law number 9 for 2006 for the Population Register and ID Card System). This law consists of 32 articles addressing definitions, establishing the system and registration process, the ID Card itself, and data retrieval and penalties. The purpose is issuing an advanced personal ID Card that will replace many other identification methods such as labor cards, driving licenses, health ID cards, to name just a few.
In a couple of months, the Population Register and Identity Card (PIRDC) system will be linked with the ministries of Interior, Labor, Health, Justice and Education, in the second phase of its implementation. The first phase of the project started last year (March 2005) and included members of the UAE Armed Forces and Interior Ministry. The second phase of the project, currently under way, includes the registration of employees at federal ministries, government departments and non-government establishments. The number of ID cards issued in the UAE currently is around 70,000. It is expected the third phase to begin early next year (2007), and it will cover the whole of the UAE population, both nationals and expatriates.
Each country has unique challenges balancing politics and citizens' privacy. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the UAE project from the socio-political perspectives. Early evaluation of the system implemented so far shows that, from the technical perspective, the system operates smoothly when assessed on the usability, accuracy and scalability dimensions (the issuing and scanning procedures appear to be sound). There are concerns that citizens' rights and data protection might have been addressed only marginally; furthermore, there might be significant concerns over the lack of legal and technological provisions to ensure data protection; a fact which is particularly worrying considering the wide range of personal information stored.
As the project unfolds, we will be following its implementation and evaluating the soft issues associated with its implementation, especially those pertaining to citizens' privacy/security, and the legal and technological dimensions.
Biography of Zeinab Karake Shalhoub
Zeinab Karake-Shalhoub is a professor of Management information Systems in the School of Business and Management at the American University in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. She served as the Associate Dean of the School of Business and Management (2000-2004). Before coming to AUS, Zeinab was a professor of Management at the Catholic University in Washington, DC (1989-2001). Zeinab also served on the Faculty of Management at George Washington University for four years (1986-1989). She has a BBA in Marketing and Research from the College of Business (Beirut, Lebanon, 1979), a MA in Quantitative Management and Economics from the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC, 1982) and a PhD in Information and Decision Systems from the George Washington University (Washington, DC, 1987). Zeinab completed three summers (summer 1996; summer 1997; and summer 2000) of professional, post-doctoral programs at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts, and spent the summer of 2006 at INSEAD (France) as a Visiting Scholar.
Zeinab is the author of more than 35 published articles, monographs, and reviews. She is also the author of five published books: Technology and Developing Economies (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1990), Information Technology and Managerial Control (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1992), Organizational Downsizing, Discrimination, and Corporate Social Responsibility (Quorum Publishers, New York, 1999), Trust and Loyalty in Electronic Commerce: An Agency Theory Perspective (Quorum, New York, 2002), and The Diffusion of Electronic Commerce in Developing Economies, coauthored with Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, UAE Minister of Economy (Edward Elgar Publication, November 2006). Zeinab is also the regional editor of Management Decision Journal.
Zeinab is twice recipient of the International Excellence Award in Management (1995, 2002). At the First AUS Commencement Ceremony, Zeinab received the AUS Excellence in Service Award (2001). She was elected and served as the Founding President of the AUS Faculty Senate (2000-2001). In 2003, Zeinab received the Best Researcher Award form The American University of Sharjah.
Laurent Laniel, INHES (Institut National des Hautes Études de Sécurité), and Pierre Piazza, Universite of Cergy-Pontoise
This paper examines several aspects of the new and controversial French biometric ID card project called INES (Secure Electronic National Identity), disclosed by the government in early 2005 and temporarily suspended a few months later. Firstly, the eventful history of carding in France is reviewed. Secondly, in order to elicit major similarities and differences between INES and past projects, the INES project itself is examined and attention is paid to its design, legitimisation by the government, and decision-making process, which for the first time involved all citizens in a democratic debate. Finally, the paper turns to the various resistances met by INES, either institutional or stemming from the media and civil society. These resistances have shed light on the various limitations of the INES project by criticising the inappropriateness of its design, the unconvincing nature of governmental justifications and the potential dangers of biometrics for civil liberties and the French conception of citizens' identity.
Biographies of Laurent Laniel and Pierre Piazza
Laurent Laniel is a sociologist of international relations and a research fellow at the Institut National des Hautes Etudes de Sécurité (INHES) near Paris. His research interests are international trade in illicit drugs, policing, and identification. His was member of UNESCO's MOST-drugs network between 1997 and 2002 and co-author of the MOST-Drugs final report, Drugs, Globalization and Criminalization. He is author of many papers and translations on the international drug problem and law enforcement. His most recent publication is "Production agricole de drogues illicites et conflictualités interétatiques" (Les Cahiers de la sécurité, n°62, 3e trimestre 2006). Most of his writings and photographs are available on his webpage at http://laniel.free.fr.
Pierre Piazza is lecturer in political science at Cergy-Pontoise University near Paris. After defending his Ph.D. thesis on "The French National Identity Card. Politics and Identity" in 2002 (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University), he worked as research fellow at IHESI (now INHES) between 2003 and 2006. He is a specialist of the social history of state identification systems and techniques. He has published several papers on the Bertillon system (anthropometry), finger printing (dactyloscopy), identity cards, and biometrics. He is author or editor of Histoire de la carte nationale d'identité (A History of the French National ID Card), (Paris, Odile Jacob, March 2004),"Police et identification. Enjeux, pratiques, techniques" ("Policing and Identification: Issues, Practices and Techniques"), Les Cahiers de la sécurité (n° 56, first quarter 2005) and Du papier à la biométrie. Identifier les individus (From Paper to Biometrics : Identifying Individuals), (Paris, Presses de science po, June 2006).
David Lyon, Department of Sociology, Queen's University
Biography of David Lyon
David Lyon is the Principal Investigator of the Globalization of Personal Data Project and the Director of the Surveillance Project. He also holds a Killam Research Fellowship 2008-2010 and is a Queen's Research Chair in Sociology. Professor Lyon has been working on surveillance issues since the 1980s, when he discussed surveillance as one of the key issues of information-based societies in The Information Society: Issues and Illusions (Polity 1988). Since then he has been involved in many debates over information politics and policy in Canada and around the world as a result of his research and publications including The Electronic Eye (1994), Surveillance Society (2001) and Surveillance after September 11 (Polity 2003). He is a founding editor of the e-journal Surveillance and Society and has particular research interests in national ID cards, aviation security and surveillance and in promoting the cross-disciplinary and international study of surveillance. Lyon is currently preparing Identifying Citizens: Software, Social Sorting and the State for Polity Press (2008).
Willem Maas, York University
Many EU initiatives promote intra-European movement. Consider the push to introduce a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) to replace the paper forms previously needed to access health treatment during a temporary stay in another country. Introducing EHIC, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern called it "a very tangible manifestation of an initiative by the European Union with real, practical benefits for its citizens," while Commission President Romano Prodi labelled it "another piece of Europe in your pocket." Thus the symbolism of a European health card is not accidental: it was intended to reinforce the portability of benefits throughout EU territory, and it achieves one aim of the Tindemans report: the "day that Europeans can move about within the Union, can communicate among themselves and when necessary receive medical care without national frontiers adding to the problems of distance, European Union will become for them a discernible reality." But introducing the card also activated the Telematics for Social Security Programme, which attempts to "speed up and simplify administrative procedures in order to improve the acquisition of entitlement and the granting and payment of social security benefits to migrant workers and other persons who have exercised their right of free movement." Furthermore, EHIC required member states to issue national health insurance cards: those member states previously without national cards were obliged to introduce them before the end of 2005. Finally, EHIC's introduction raised the spectre of the further categorization and sorting of individuals within Europe into those granted entitlements and those not.
Biography of Willem Maas
Willem Maas (PhD Yale) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Glendon College, York University and previously spent three years at New York University, where he was Assistant Professor of Politics and European Studies. He has been a Parliamentary Intern and also worked at the Privy Council Office in Ottawa and the European Commission in Brussels. Professor Maas' teaching and research focus on comparative politics, European integration, citizenship and migration, sovereignty, nationalism, democratic theory, and federalism. He is the author of Creating European Citizens (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
Taha Mehmood, Researcher, Information and Society Project, Sarai: CSDS, Delhi, India
India is poised to join a select club of nations with a country rollout of National Identity Card. As the debates around the impending introduction of the National Id card get intensified, this paper, through events, anecdotes, case studies, government orders and a range of references representing sociological, political, historical and philosophical sensibilities, sets forth the following argument. That far from demarcating clear boundaries between the citizen and alien, legal and illegal immigrant, and resident and non resident Indian, the Multipurpose National Identity Card would complicate the issue of individual identity further. As the lines between 'legible' and 'illegible' citizens would become Fuzzy, the emergent national group membership together with other existing group memberships will give rise to an amorphous identity of 'citizen' open to contestation and negotiation.
Biography of Taha Mehmood
Taha Mehmood is a media graduate with a background in business administration. He has been working on the Information Society Project for the last two years. His published papers and articles include Playing Cards (Presented at World Information City conference, Bagalore, November 2005 http://world-information.org/wio. and Act of Leisure (in collaboration with Iram Ghufran) published in Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_05.html.
Benjamin Muller, Simon Fraser University
Since the July 2005 bombings in London, the notion of the homegrown terrorist has generated increasing attention from the state and media. Just days after the Deputy Director of Canadian Security Intelligence Service spoke to a Senate Committee in May 2006, his suggestion that Canada had its own crop of homegrown terrorists appeared prophetic, as 17 individuals were arrested in Brampton, Ontario as alleged homegrown terrorists. The subsequent discourse driven by references to generation jihad and individuals who hate freedom, expose the exclusionary character of contemporary citizenship politics, even in supposedly multicultural contexts. Subsequent events in the United States, and the notorious arrests in the UK which led to increased airport security on August 10 2006 served to underscore the existence of so-called homegrown terrorists in western liberal democracies, and consistently deal with these individuals through an intensely exclusionary discourse of citizenship; regardless of the fact that these individuals are citizens. For state officials such instances underscore the necessity of introducing national identity card programs. Considering the discourses that have framed discussions of homegrown terrorists, this paper considers the significance and impact of targeting/defining certain domestic citizens as threats. National ID cards are simply regarded as a further manifestation of this exclusionary politics, where the tripartite categorization of citizenship raised by T. H. Marshall appears to be rendered obsolete. Much like registered or trusted traveler programs, National ID cards act as technologies of control and capture, where citizens access and movement is restricted or facilitated according to a set of criteria, which in this case is linked to their commitment to the political community. Unfortunately, religious affiliation, place of birth, and the productive/consumptive capacity of citizens are often deemed to be substantive metrics of that commitment.
Biography of Benjamin Muller
Benjamin Muller received his BA and MA from the University of Victoria, and a PhD from Queen's University, Belfast. Since 2005 he has been teaching international relations, critical security studies, and the politics of homeland security, in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Muller has published a number of articles in various academic journals and edited collections on the politics of biometrics, the intersection of citizenship studies and critical security studies. In addition to active involvement in a number of research networks on critical approaches to security in both North America and Europe, Dr. Muller is currently working on two book projects, including a monograph on The Biometric State: Trusted Travellers, Citizen Suspects, and Homegrown Terrorists, and a co-authored text (with John Measor) on War Pornography: Visual Technologies and Identity in Theatres of War (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Midori Ogasawara, M.A. Candidate, Department of Sociology, Queen's University
The Japanese national ID card system was initiated to monitor the colonial population in North China in the 1920s. Although Japan lost its colonies after World War II, the ID system survived. It was re-created as the Alien Registration Card and used to track the ex-colonial population within Japan, mainly Koreans and Chinese. "Foreigners" are required to register and carry this card even today, and fingerprinting was part
of the system until it was abolished following Korean and Chinese resistance in 2000. In addition to monitoring "foreigners", the government has established two kinds of identification files on nationals: Koseki and Juki-Net. Koseki records family information and traces the ancestors of each household. It moulds individuals into a patriarchal definition of "household", and connects them as subjects of the
Emperor State through this medium. Foreigners are completely excluded from Koseki, which implies membership in Japan, but Koseki does not clearly show citizenship as a right. Rather, Koseki constitutes a popular concept of "the Japanese nationals" as subjects of the state and contributes to maintaining a colonial ethnic hierarchy in Japan. Juki-Net is a computer network that accumulates and organizes personal information about individuals by ID number. It can search for and access this information. The Alien Registration System and Koseki are technologies set up to divide the population into those who are outside and those who are inside the privileges of citizenship. Juki-Net goes beyond these administrative categories and provides the state a more fluid, individualistic, and multi-purpose surveillance. It exposes individuals to ceaseless risk control by the state and encourages them to conform to the state dataveillance.
Biography of Midori Ogasawara
Midori Ogasawara worked for Japan's national newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, from 1994-2004. As a reporter, she covered surveillance issues including national identification card systems, CCTV in public spaces, war compensation between Japan and Asian countries, especially sex slavery on behalf of the Japanese army, and other human rights issues. She was awarded a Fulbright and a Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists at Stanford University from 2004-2005. She is also the author of four books including a children's picture storybook, Princess Sunflower, which is based on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It has been published in three languages. She has been a M.A. student in Sociology at Queen's since 2005.
Charles Raab, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
This paper will consider questions of "identity" and "identification", which are at the heart of identity-card schemes as well as identity-management practices. Using a range of sociological and public administrative sources, and with some reference to schemes such as the UK's Identity Card Act and it proposed database, it will look at the ambiguities of these concepts and the discrepancy between what persons might understand by their "identity" (single or multiple) and the identities and related characteristics that are ascribed to them by commercial and administrative identification processes. It will discuss issues and problems, especially for citizens, consumers and states, that are involved in these contrasting conceptions of the person, and in the control and entitlement models they imply.
Biography of Charles Raab
Charles D. Raab is Professor of Government at the School of Social and Political Studies at The University of Edinburgh. His main research and teaching interests are in public policy and governance, including British government, information policy privacy protection and public access to information) and information technology in democratic politics, government and commerce. Publications include (with Colin Bennett) The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective (Ashgate, 2003; 2nd edition MIT Press, 2006); (with M Arnott, eds.), The Governance of Schooling: Comparative Studies (Routledge/Falmer, 2000); (with M Anderson et al.), Policing the European Union (Clarendon Press, 1996); (with A McPherson), Governing Education: A Sociology of Policy Since 1945(Edinburgh U.P., 1988) and many contributions to academic journals and edited volumes. He is a member of the GPD Advisory Board.
Jeffrey Stanton, Mawaki Chango, and Jeffrey Owens, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems promise to move the world one step
closer to the so-called "Internet of Things." In this vision, objects in the physical world will become as accessible to information systems as data already are (ITU, 2005). Governments, industrial consortia, and individual organizations have begun to examine and/or adopt RFID technologies as a means of identifying people, with the expectation of improvements in flexibility, efficiency, and productivity that far outstrip those provided by mature identification technologies (Engels et al., 2001; e.g., magnetic stripe cards). Using RFID as part of a personal identification system generally involves capturing a biometrically unique feature of an individual and encoding this information digitally on an RFID chip for later retrieval and analysis during a subsequent authentication process. The International Civil Aviation Organization (http://www.icao.int) - a non-governmental group - has been instrumental in the development of strategies and standards for implementing RFID-enabled passports. ICAO's "Machine Readable Travel Document" (MRTD) initiative has evolved from its roots in a 1998 resolution of ICAO's internal governance body into a full fledged research program on biometrics, RFID, and antifraud technologies.
On the face of the matter, the efforts of a capable international body to develop technical standards with the potential to improve air travel safety seem laudable. Although legal scholars such as Osieke (1979) have questioned ICAO's authority to set or enforce international policy, the organization boasts participation by 189 nations and has a sixty year history of improving the quality and safety of the worldwide air travel infrastructure. At the same time, however, ICAO standards are sometimes seen by government regulators as a quick and inexpensive basis for new national policy (Singel, 2004). For these reasons, ICAO may exert a substantial influence on the technology and adoption of national identification card systems.
In this paper, I plan to conduct an institutional case study of ICAO, using publicly
available documents, to analyze the most prominent influences on the MRTD policy making
process. I plan to use a behavioral economics perspective (e.g., Rose-Ackerman, 1996) to frame the motivations of individuals and organizations involved in ICAO's standards development processes. Results of this analysis may illuminate strategies for injecting the interests of civil libertarians into the processes by which ICAO standards are informally adopted into national standards for personal identification.
Biography of Jeffrey Stanton
Jeffrey M. Stanton, Ph.D. (University of Connecticut, 1997) is an associate professor and director of the Ph.D. program in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. Dr. Stanton's research focuses organizational behavior and technology, with his most recent projects examining how behavior affects information security and privacy in organizations. He is the author with Dr. Kathryn Stam of the book, The Visible Employee: Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets - Without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust (2006, Information Today, ISBN: 0910965749).
Stanton has published more than 60 scholarly articles in top peer-reviewed behavioral science journals, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, and Human Performance. His work also appears in Computers and Security, Communications of the ACM, the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Information Technology and People, the Journal of Information Systems Education, as well as Behaviour & Information Technology. Dr. Stanton is an expert psychometrician with published works on the measurement of job satisfaction and job stress, as well as research on creating abridged versions of scales and conducting survey research on the Internet; he is on the editorial board of Organizational Research Methods, the premier methodological journal in the field of management. Dr. Stanton is an associate editor at the journal Human Resource Management. Dr. Stanton's research has been supported through more than ten different grants and awards including the National Science Foundation's prestigious CAREER award.
Scott Thompson, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Victoria
The reinstatement of National ID cards has been the subject of heated debate in western countries and in recent years has lead many to speculate about the social impact that these cards may instill. What is perhaps less well known is that the impact of this type of technology need not be speculation, as National ID cards were in use in the UK during both the first and second World Wars.
During the years of the second World War the UK, like many other nations around the world, opted to initiate a national ID card system in order to better manage its national resources. The scope of the program was tremendous as it was to include detailed information on all citizens in order to fully exploit the population for the national war effort.
The focus of this paper will be on the UK's National Registration program during the second World War and its impact on populations, as well as how the National Registration program lead to the proliferation of surveillance technologies and data flows in the pre-electronic state. Particular attention will be given to impact on the poor and ethnic minorities, as well as those classified as being of "enemy" origin.
Biography of Scott Thompson
Scott Thompson is a sociology PhD candidate at the University of Victoria currently engaged in research concerning classification and its consequences during the pre-electronic period. He has published three papers on surveillance and liquor control in Ontario, Canada: "A Kind of Prohibition: Targets of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's Interdiction List" (Surveillance and Social Problems. Hier and Greenberg eds. Forthcoming); "Administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario, Canada" (Surveillance & Society 4(1/2): 1-28, with Gary Genosko); "Tense Theory: The Temporalities of Surveillance" (Theorizing Surveillance. Lyon ed. 2006, with Gary Genosko). He is currently writing a book with Dr. Gary Genosko tentatively entitled Punched Drunk: Alcohol, Technology and Race in Ontario (Forthcoming, UofT Press).
Dean Wilson and Peter Holland, Monash University, Australia
In the 1980s Australia witnessed a vigorous debate over the proposal to introduce a national identity document known as the 'Australia Card'. The defeat of the 'Australia Card' concept was heralded as a victory for the rights of individual citizens to data privacy. However, in the post 9/11 context proposals for an Australian national identity scheme have re-emerged. The conservative Howard government is currently developing a biometric 'Smart Card' that will be mandatory for all citizens requiring access to government services. The 'Smart Card' represents a significant expansion of the data matching and surveillance capacities of the Australian State.
This paper will trace the shifting discourses of the identity card debate in the Australian context. In line with other nation-states of the Global North, arguments that ID cards will reduce terrorism, prevent fraud and assist immigration control have been mobilized in Australia to justify the 'Smart Card'. Drawing upon notions of the 'ideal suspect' suggested by Giorgio Agamben, this paper argues the 'Smart Card' project contains the potential for expansive processes of criminalization. A national 'Smart Card' therefore presages an advanced capacity of the State to categorize identities as inside or outside. This capacity has proven extremely compelling for an Australian State whose powers are undercut by the forces of globalization. Enhanced surveillance capacity in the form of the Smart Card thus represents a crucial political symbol for the continued vitality of the Australian nation-state. It is also signifies a crucial reconfiguration of the relationship between the Australian State and its citizens.
The Surveillance Studies Centre
c/o David Murakami Wood
Department of Criminology
University of Ottawa
Canada
