City of ghosts
In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News, Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent reports from the devastated city of Falluja.
December 24
In the morning we went back towards Falluja and heard that there were queues of people waiting to try to get back into the city. The government had made an announcement saying that the people from some districts could start to go back home; they promised compensation. About midday we got a mile east of the city and saw that four queues had formed near the American base. They were mostly men, waiting for US military ID to allow them back home.
The men were angry: “This is a humiliation. I say no more than that. These IDs are to make us bow Fallujan heads in shame,” one of them said.
I met Major Paul Hackett, a marine officer in the Falluja liaison base. He said that the US military was not trying to humiliate anyone, but that the IDs were necessary for security. “I mean, my understanding is that ultimately they can hang this ID card on a wall and keep it as a souvenir,” he said.
They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.
But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at 6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot on sight by the US military. Tomorrow, we would try again to get into the city.
So the security of Falluja is maintained by biometric ID cards is it. We don’t have the full story here but then Dr. Ali Fadhil’s report isn’t considered with the issues of ID cards it is concerned with the devastation of Falluja.
Is the US military demanding people identify themselves whenever a patrol comes across an individual in Falluja?
Do they have a list of suspected insurgents at the ID processing centre in order to prevent those individuals gaining ID cards?
What happens to the data once law and order has been restored to Falluja and Iraq in general?
I doubt that the use of biometric information in this system has an increased security effect over the simple photo-IDs that could have been issued to returning Fallujans. It seems to me that this merely an experiment to test the biometric ID card system in the field as it were by a US government which is intending to introduce such a system in some form or another for it’s own citizens.
In other fingerprinting news we have this from Bruce Schneier on the Security issues with Fingerprinting Students.
