Group items tagged

the managing committee of the group housing society now finds itself in the middle of another controversy: for making it mandatory for skilled workers to furnish their fingerprints before entering the complex. The managing committee has been warned by the police to stop the illegal practice. "We received an e-mail from two members of the society about the practice being carried out, following which we issued the warning. As per law, only government investigative agencies have the right to take fingerprints. We will look into the possibility of taking legal action once we receive a complaint from those whose fingerprints have been taken.

Empowering the investigating agencies, the Delhi High Court on Friday ruled that the fingerprints or specimen handwriting of an accused taken by an Investigating Officer during probe into a case was admissible as evidence even though a permission from a magistrate was not taken.

With India planning a huge database of 1.5 crore criminals for matching with the hand or face sample of an accused, the criminals or terror mongers will find it much tougher to hide. A fingerprint or a face in a CCTV shot captured from a crime or terror scene anywhere in India would lead the law-enforcing authorities straight to the culprit at the click of a button. The home ministry is working on an ambitious project to collect the fingerprints, palm prints, faces and iris samples of all the arrested and convicted persons in the country and store these in a central database. This biometric data will be accessible to all the police units across the country for getting real-time results on the identity of a suspect. Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/home-ministry-plans-national-database-on-criminals/1/157679.html

To ensure elimination of bogus ration cards, the central government is pushing states to go for biometric ones, taking the help of unique identification (UID) numbers. States have been asked to take a lead in distributing biometric ration cards, as identification of beneficiaries for issuing ration cards is a state subject. States like Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra have already launched pilot projects to make biometric ration cards. A senior food ministry official said a biometric ration card would be different from a regular one. It would have barcoded details of the beneficiary, with a picture of the head of the family. The card can be read at any ration shop through a machine that will then be matched with the fingerprint details of the beneficiary to eliminate duplication or misuse.

Malaysia on Monday indefinitely postponed a massive exercise to fingerprint at least two million illegal foreign workers including many Indians in the country until all parties were ready for it. An amnesty scheme to encourage illegal migrant workers to come and register was to begin today but has been indefinitely postponed.

"The officials have already collected the data relating to 33,316 fishermen in 66 villages after conducting an extensive survey in the 10 coastal mandals of the district for issue of tamper-proof ID cards using fingerprinting technology and pooling the information in a centralised database of the centre to better manage the internal security. The ID card comprising details like the name of the fisherman, parents' names, address, educational qualification, ration card number and voter ID card number, would be very be very useful particularly when fishermen were stranded in the high seas at times of natural calamities, he added. In all, 4,190 fishing boats were registered in the district so far as per the Centre's directive, he said."

The law ministry is working on a proposal to make right to privacy a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution. The right to privacy would include the right to confidentiality of communication, confidentiality of private or family life, protection of his honour and good name, protection from search, detention or exposure of lawful communication between individuals, privacy from surveillance, confidentiality of banking, financial, medical and legal information, protection from identity theft of various kinds, protection of use of a person's photographs, fingerprints, DNA samples and other samples taken at police stations and other places and protection of data relating to individual.

The State-level pilot project of the biometric census for the National Population Register (NPR) began here on Friday. Speaking at the inaugural function, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, Minister for Revenue, said that the creation of a comprehensive database of the population would enable the people to avail of the benefits and services under various government programmes more effectively. It would not only aid the planning process, but also strengthen the security of the nation, he said. An iris scan was conducted on the Minister and his fingerprints and photograph were taken during the inaugural function

The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) is set to become the first educational campus in the country to function through unique identification (UID) numbers. The UID-enabled campus will work towards making a cashless environment where all transactions from buying a notebook to a parantha in the canteen will be done through UID numbers and biometric (fingerprint) authentication.