Israeli government’s call for mandatory biometric ID system met with backlash

You also get vacation days from prison, free education and many other "benefits", including being able to own small appliances (TV, radio, microwave.. no not kidding) even in high security prisons.

You don't have to go as far as Norway to find prisons which are not like US ones.

The biometric db will not track ethnicity, Israel has already a national identity registry and a mandatory national identity card law like many other nations.

For the nonsensical scenario you propose it effectively has already everything in place.

Israel also issues biometric passports and smart identity cards the difference is that the biometric info is only stored on the smart card embedded in those and it's also not stored in a raw form but as a set of fuzzy hashes which are created from the biometric information collected from the card or passport holder.

The controversy here is the proposal of a central db which will hold raw biometric data.

Please bare in mind that Israel has also a national bone marrow databas which covers about 80% of the population, as well as an opt-in by default organ donor program if you take out a drivers license.

And anyone who went through military service also has their DNA and fingerprints on file.

The DB here is basically a proposal to unify all of these, centralize them and make it available to law enforcement which is in gross violation of the laws that preceded it and also a pretty huge security liability.

Many people do not want a central database because it's going to end up being a prime target for criminals and even nation states, and that the use of previously collected information for law enforcement and potential future use for private organizations (e.g. insurance providers) is a gross violation of both privacy and common sense.

There is a good reason why for example the IDF biometric database is not accessible to law enforcement or any other entity even within the IDF, as it's sole purpose is for casualty identification anything else would be considered a misuse of power especially considering that Israel has compulsory military service.

The bonemarrow database does not contain any biometric information that can be used for legal means, and the organ donor database doesn't contain it either.

The national registry contains your birth, nationality and family information (parents, dependants and children) again no biometric information, and this database has been leaked constantly over the years as it was made available to certain private organizations and commercial software which contained copies of that database was fairly quickly pirated.

The amount of information there was enough to create a shitstorm, it tended to be out of data but it had your full name, your national identity number which is unique and not reused and your last registered address.

And while the latter tended to be grossly outdated by the time it was leaked as misfortune happens the people who are the most vulnerable to fraud; the elderly and recent immigrants tended to have the most correct information as they tended to be freshly registered and or less mobile.

And as mentioned before the biometric identity documents follow the globally accepted standard where the information is stored and checked against the data stored on the embedded smartcard rather than in a central database.

The new database is basically a unification of all of this where you'll end up storing raw and unrestricted biometric info including fingerprints, retinal scans and likely in the future DNA which will be accessible for direct queries by any entity with access to it, this is something people do not want to accept and I can hardly blame them for it.

I never understood the ideas that are prevalent in the US where effectively making a database of people is nearly unconstitutional, where there are effectively no mandatory national (federal) ID laws and where any ID law is opposed being the first sign of fascism.

But there is a huge difference between storing information that we already know now can be abused and we can't even imagine how a malicious entity could abuse it in 5, 10 or 20 years.

And as the expiration date for biometrics is literally your lifetime, I would personally air on the side of caution and say there since there is no need for a central DB there is no need to create one especially since we haven't even began to understand the risk profile that this information in the wrong hands can project.