NEED FOR IDENTIFICATION
Many public documents in this country are issued without ascertaining the true identity or antecedents of individuals. This is because of the absence of a national, shared database of individuals. The electoral rolls are the closest to a national database, but even these rolls cannot identify individuals, since they merely enumerate them.

Because of this, the drivers of Delhi’s killer buses are not too worried about losing their licences after running over somebody, for they can easily skip to another state to get a fresh driver’s licence and return to Delhi to continue killing people. In Delhi, the transport department has computerised records and is required to maintain biometric information, including fingerprints and iris scans. This data, however, is not online or shared nationally. An official issuing a licence to an individual in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, has no way of knowing whether he already has a licence in some other state. The first step in securing the country, therefore, would be to issue every citizen with an identity card containing embedded biometric information, address, criminal records and other details. Such a card would be a requisite for all transactions, including payments, receipts, purchases and public dealings.

A citizen without a card would not be able to function, travel, own a cell phone or perhaps even watch a movie. Law enforcement officials, guards and other security personnel should be allowed to check the authenticity of the identity card and should also have powers to apprehend anyone using an invalid card. High-security areas should have checkpoints to authenticate the identity of visitors. Hotels and restaurants too could install these kits to authenticate their clients and keep out unwanted guests. Money transactions, including entry into ATM booths, banks and post offices would require identification. Even schools should implement an identification system. Travel — whether by air, land or sea — and entry into public places should require authentication.

Even entry into public places such as railway stations, bus depots, shopping malls, parks, movie halls, theatres, art galleries and airports should be subject to identification. Individuals would not be able to rent or purchase property, including houses, cars and telephones, without confirming their identity. Since all classes of people would have the same sort of identity card, the problem of registering servants, drivers and tradespeople would no longer require a visit to the police station. Much duplication of effort by various public and civic agencies would be obviated. This one card would be sufficient for opening bank accounts, applying for a passport, buying a SIM card or including one’s name in the electoral rolls. Illegal immigrants, terrorists, criminals and foreigners would not have access to a host of services. Such a system, if properly implemented, would make it much simpler for law enforcers to swoop down on potential terrorists. If it sounds futuristic, be warned that such a system will be implemented in this country sooner than anyone might think. In the United Kingdom, the government has already started implementing such an identity card system in phases.

LET PUBLIC RECORDS GO ONLINE
More and more public records, including judicial orders, criminal records, major transactions, property registration and so on, are getting computerised. In other words, a vast distributed database on individuals already exists. The next step would be to integrate these diverse databases and make them available nationally on demand. Coupled with the Right to Information, this capability would mean that individual records would be publicly accessible and increasingly transparent to law enforcing and investigating agencies. Providing false or abridged information could be self-defeating or even liable to prosecution. The implications of this in day-to-day life would be enormous. Even innocuous suppression of facts or falsification could be detected. Obtaining a loan, registering property, making legal declarations, getting admission in an educational institution or obtaining public services without providing accurate information culd then easily be detected. In other words, an individual would be left virtually without a fig leaf — and all of this data would be online as well.

BUSINESS RISKS
The liability of businessmen in many areas is bound to increase exponentially. Already, cybercafe operators are required to ascertain the identity of their numerous clients. The same would be the case with a host of service providers, including companies and individuals offering car rentals, apartments, short-term accommodation, information assistance, cooking gas, and every kind of imaginable service. The sale of material considered even remotely sensitive would be monitored, and it would be the responsibility of the seller to ensure that sales are made only to authorised persons. Contractors would have to verify the identity of their employees and those in sensitive industries such as IT would have to check criminal and judicial records to evaluate their employees.

NETTING THEM
Few people are aware that every email they send is being scrutinised by a Western signals intelligence collection system called Echelon. This system put in place by five countries (United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) has an array of supercom puters that intercept each mail, filter them for key words and key phrases and flag potentially sensitive ones for further analysis. This initiative is led by the US government’s technical intelligence organisation, the National Security Agency (NSA). It is reported that the NSA’s assets include earth-orbiting satellites that can home in on cellphone conversations, landline chats, faxes and email. South Asia, particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan, are key targets of the US sigint operations. which is why US intelligence could easily confirm the involvement of ISI operatives in the blast at India’s Kabul embassy earlier this year. Indian intelligence agencies also routinely check emails, telephone conversations and faxes. In the future, all communications will become increasingly transparent to law enforcers. Online privacy was always a myth, in the future nobody will even pretend it is.

MORE RESTRICTIONS
Surveillance has always come at a price, as is evident from the experience of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Communist China. A system that is monitored and where law-enforcers often have extraordinary powers of discretion, is open to abuse. At times, limits have to be imposed on personal liberties. While it might be free to practice one’s religion, it might well be illegal to use religion to incite co-religionists. It might be permissible to criticise the government but it might be a crime to say anything to lower the dignity of the executive or legislature. The judiciary has traditionally protected itself through the notion of contempt of court. We might well have a similar law about contempt of the legislature or the executive. Public utterances would almost certainly be monitored and individuals would have to be doubly careful in choosing their associates. You would not want to be known as having had breakfast with Osama bin Laden when he was a student in engineering college or of being Hafeez Saeed’s partner in prayer class. All activity challenging the establishment would be driven underground. A vast subculture would emerge with its own rules and regulations or lack of them. Like in many a science fiction environment, law-enforcers would be chasing elusive shape shifters in the miasma of the underground.

PREEMPTING TERRORISTS
The ultimate in counter-terrorism would be to predict a terrorist strike before it happens. This is the ideal of every law-enforcement effort and certainly of surveillance. Apart from the fact that this requires a huge realtime surveillance and predictive capability, there are reasons to suggest that even attempting to build up such an intrusive surveillance system might be pointless. There is, for one, the philosophical issue of whether an individual can be termed a criminal even before actually committing a crime. Can the mere contemplation, intent or preparation of a criminal act make a person liable to apprehension and criminal prosecution? The first premise of jurisprudence is that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. But when a system attempts to monitor the very thoughts of people, the notion of guilt becomes dangerously vague. Even a notion born in fantasy could be criminal. Even acts that define one’s existence, like a potential assassin’s decision not to pull the trigger, would be considered meaningless. For then the system would prejudge an individual’s essence and not let existence precede it. This is a huge dilemma which might never be resolved, and perhaps that is why there can never be a perfect surveillance system!

[This article was written for The Asian Age]