Big Brother is Watching

Technology pervades every facet of our lives. Things like mobile telephones and the Internet have become part of our existence, stuff we can’t live without. Today, however, technology has broader, more profound implications for society and the world we live in. Technology has revolutionized everything, from something as personal as the way we make coffee to something as communal as crime busting.

Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) started out with registering people and issuing national identity cards, marking use of the latest technology to assist its goals. Today, NADRA has made technology its business. The organization owns the largest information and communications technology resources in the country, with an IT work force of more than ten thousand and the most expansive communications system of any single Pakistan organization.

NADRA is now strategically poised to actually be of consequence to the sociopolitical environment of the country. A seamless, accurate record of the more than 150 million people coupled with high tech analysis capabilities and powerful knowledge discovery tools will enable NADRA to cast an all encompassing electronic net, an all-seeing eye, so to speak, over the populace, keeping track of everything from your family tree to the car you drive. Sound totalitarian? Welcome to the new Pakistan.

Thankfully, reality isn’t all that Orwellian. NADRA’s technologies are dedicated to more benevolent causes. The immense resources of the organization enable it to detect fraud, irregularities and discrepancies in the public sphere. Geographical information systems maintain records of real estate ownership and regional demographics, designed to eventually replace the role of the traditional patwari. Vehicle information systems are being designed to keep tabs on every single automobile that plies the roads of this country, preventing theft and hunting down stolen cars. Biometrics systems currently in place recognize and store fingerprints for verification purposes. New systems are being designed to recognize individual faces. To this end, NADRA has created an entire section committed exclusively to research and development.

To cite one recent success story, NADRA discovered six people attempting to forge multiple identities. The biometric verification systems at NADRA matched fingerprints submitted with different applications. Six pairs matched, indicating that six individuals had attempted to acquire more than one identity card. Investigations revealed that most of the individuals had applied with different names. Some of the applicants had also specified conflicting paternal names. A Show Cause Notice for the concerned applicants was issued by NADRA in the national press, stating that the individuals were to elaborate their apparently deceitful position within a specified time period, upon failure of which legal action could be taken under the NADRA Ordinance 2000.

People are motivated to acquire multiple identity cards due to a variety of reasons. False identities are utilized by criminals as a weapon of choice to outfox law enforcement. Such institutionalized discrepancy certainly makes crime much simpler. An individual, when suspected or accused of a crime, may display an alternative identity card in order to disprove an allegation. Criminals also use multiple identity cards to avail the services of various organizations that require proof of identity. Banks, membership clubs, hotels, real estate societies, car dealerships, universities, all require identity cards to validate contract. Fraud is easier with multiple identities as a means to wriggle out of contract.

Individuals may also use false identity cards to open fraudulent bank accounts. Such bank accounts may be used to store funds obtained from illicit sources such as drug trafficking and terrorism. Multiple identities make money laundering much simpler for international criminals.

Similarly, multiple identity cards may enable a person to defraud the passport office to obtain multiple passports. Such passports may appear to be perfectly valid, since they are backed up by apparently valid identity cards. The only shortcoming, of course, is that the passport holder may possess as many passports, with as many different names, as he has identity cards. This makes it easier for the individual to defraud international authorities such as immigration services of other countries. For example, a person who is refused a migration visa and barred from reapplying can apply again under a different identity.

Today, the green passport is looked upon with suspicion at almost every airport counter in the world. The international press is awash with stories on how almost every terrorist trail somehow or the other tends to lead to Pakistan. Pakistan as a country has become notorious for providing safe haven to international criminals and terrorists. This hasn’t made life easier for the genuine citizens of Pakistan who want to travel abroad. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, all sorts of individuals, from Burma to Somalia found it highly desirable to obtain a Pakistani passport because of the sheer ease and simplicity. All a criminal had to do was to travel to Pakistan illegally and get a Pakistani passport. Even corrupt Pakistani embassy officials abroad used to provide "valid" passports to foreign individuals in return for bribes. All this was made possible because of the lack of integration between various registration services. Thus it becomes imperative for a registration authority to ensure that every individual is issued a single identity card, constraining him or her to a single identity at home and abroad.

Pakistan is now confronted with a perilous geo-strategic situation while disorder reigns supreme at home. The people of Pakistan need to re-engineer the way they live and the way they work, just to ensure that they survive. They need to find a way to create order out of chaos. NADRA just might provide that ray of hope that is so frantically needed to keep the house in order.