Report - Guardian

58 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005ChinaSince 1985 the Chinese Government has issued an ID card to every citizen. This cardoriginally held relatively simple information, including nationality, birth date, IDnumber, and household registration information. Often this was issued and stored by theprovince.In 2003 the Government passed a new law to update the ID card. According to onePublic Security official,“The ID card and the ID number are mainly going to be used to verifya resident’s identity, safeguard people’s rights, make it easier forpeople to organize activities and maintain law and order.” 113The new card contains a chip to store the additional information. Although DNA wasconsidered as a biometric to be stored on the chip and in a database, 114 this waseventually rejected. Similarly, the Chinese did consider requiring a fingerprint butbelieved that it was too daunting to collect all this information, and they in any casedoubted the reliability of the technology. According to an official at the ChineseNational Registration Centre:“Such an effort to introduce biometrics, the huge quantity (ofcardholders), is not feasible to start.” 115Even the digitized photo on the chip will not be part of a facial recognition system.Information kept on the card can, however, be accessed by a reader held by both publicand private sector organizations.The public response to the new card was reported as relatively mute. It is believed thatChinese citizens were resigned to the collection of information by the Government.According to one professor: “[o]ur security officials already have all the informationabout us, anyway, so this is not a big change.” 116From 2004 the Government began issuing a ‘second generation’ mandatory ID cardinvolving contact-less chips. These chips contain very little storage capacity (4k), soinformation on the chip will be limited to name, gender, ethnicity, residence, and date ofbirth. 117JapanThe Government of Japan approved a change of a law regarding ‘basic residentregisters’ in 1999. This involved the central government issue of an 11-digit number toall citizens and residents. Previously computerized resident registration information atlocal databases is now connected to the Resident Registry Network System, otherwise113 ‘China Readies Super ID Card, a Worry to Some’, David W. Chen, The New York Times, August 19, 2003.114 ‘Chinese ID cards to carry genetic sample’, Jo Best, Silicon.com, September 2, 2003.115 ‘Fingerprints Missing From Chinese National ID Card’, Dan Balaban, Card Technology, September 11, 2003,http://www.cardtechnology.com/cgi-bin/readstory.pl?story=20030911CTDN261.xml.116 ‘China Readies Super ID Card, a Worry to Some’, David W. Chen, The New York Times, August 19, 2003.117 ‘China starts to launch second-generation ID cards’, People’s Daily, March 30, 2004,http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200403/30/eng20040330_138863.shtml.