Source: Danas
The issue of new IDs will not start on 27 January, announces the Interior Minister Dragan Jocic
IDs without chips, after all
The issue of new IDs will not start on 27 January, announces Dragan Jocic
IDs without chips, after all
SABIC: A well-intentioned attempt at resolving, or at least eliminating serious issues regarding the content and the procedure passing the lawBelgrade - New Serbian IDs will not have chips and their issue will not start on 27 January, as prescribed by the law. The Government will pass a regulation prescribing that the chips in new IDs will not be compulsory, said the Interior Minister Dragan Jocic to the Beta Agency. He added that the regulation will regulate in detail the ID Act, adopted in July last year. “The rule is that there will be no chip. Those who want it can get it,” said Jocic. He says that IDs will, however, contain biometric data as it is, after all, “a modern document”.
The idea that the Government should intervene with a regulation and interfere with the content of the law may instigate serious criticisms from the aspect of formal and legal possibilities for its realization. Anyway, I think that - considering that the Parliament is in session - the regulation is a well-intentioned attempt at resolving or at least removing serious issues concerning the content and the procedure of passing the law, says the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance Rodoljub Sabic for Danas.
Sabic points out that the implementation of the provisions of the ID Act place Serbia in a small group of non-EU countries whose citizens have electronic, so-called “smart” IDs. This, according to him, even when the law was being proposed, provoked different reactions from different entities.
Jocic says that the Minister has to write the rulebook on the ID form after the Government has adopted the regulation. The rulebook “will make the regulation complete”. He also says that the deadline for the issue of IDs has been missed. The equipment for the production of IDs and other cards was bought in 2002 and the plan was that the MI would be producing them. However, the MI has its scope of work and it cannot be involved in production, says Jocic. Therefore, the forms will be produced by the Institute for Manufacturing Banknotes and Coins (in Serbian: Zavod za izradu novcanica - ZIN) and the MI will be in charge of data entering, clarifies Jocic.
According to the Minister, the equipment, which is still being paid off by the Government, will be ceded to the ZIN through the Property Directorate.
- Constitutional right of citizens for the protection of personal data is more theoretical than real in Serbia, says Sabic and adds that the same was remarked in the report of the European Commission.
This is why, according to Sabic, the priority of the future convocation of the Parliament should be passing a new Personal Data Protection Act. Sabic explains that some experts, NGO and Church representatives see biometric IDs as an unnecessary move that is not going to give the desired results - it is the move which, although not really threatening, is irritating because of its “totalitarian” characteristics.
- Some people see it as a step towards the establishment of real totalitarian control. Others recognise the first of the alleged three-stage process: first you get a document with a chip, than you have a single document with a chip and finally you just get the chip which you don't carry in your pocket or a wallet as any other document, but on your body, implanted your skin, says Sabic and adds, “No matter how (un) founded these assumptions are, it is certain that they would have been partly eliminated, or reduced, if there had been proper and wider public debate about this serious issue, with the participation of experts”.
Sabic says that even among the majority, “for whom meeting a very pronounced need to fight organised crime and terrorism, the principal inclination to accept progressive innovations and empirically proven benefits of new technologies” are the priority and present the best argument for new IDs, there are some reservations.
- IDs with chips mean that new data bases will be much richer and more complex than the existing, classical ones. This increases opportunities for the authorities to use a huge amount of information almost instantaneously, which can be abused either by the authorities or the entity that got the information. Of course, it does not have to be the authorities that will necessarily abuse the information, use it illegally or meddle with its content, but this can happen as a result of malicious intrusions from the outside. To this we have to add suspicions and warnings about the likely (mis) use of IDs with electronic chips for surveillance and location of their owners, without them being aware of it, of course, concludes Sabic.
Public debate reduced to Internet forum debates
From the very moment the ID Bill arrived at the Serbian Parliament, debates started on the Internet forums about electronic personal documents. The participants' comments ranged from “acceptance of the inevitable”, through disapproval, to bizarre suggestions to “implant identification chips to every person in the country”. Most comments were about the safety of electronic documents. People do not understand the system of protection of data bases and they are afraid that their privacy might be violated. Anyway, the information about the owners of these documents will be kept in one data base. Their protection is regulated under the current Personal Data Protection Act of 1998. S. Stamenic, Beta
