Report - Guardian

64 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005Opposition parties claimed that the majority of Taiwanese supported the fingerprintingprogramme. According to one party leader, 70 percent of respondents to polls agreedwith the programme. 140In June 2005, the Council of Grand Justices issued a temporary injunction to halt theprogramme. This was the first time that the Council had used this power. 141 The courtfroze the section on the collection of fingerprints, on grounds that the database offingerprints would involve considerable administrative costs, and if the database waslater found to be unconstitutional, these resources would be wasted. A final judgementon the constitutionality of fingerprinting is pending at the time of this report’s release.ThailandDuring the 1980s, the Thai Government introduced the Population Information Network(PIN) to centralize in Bangkok all information held on individuals and households atprovincial and district level. 142One of the current priorities of the Government is to replace that system with a chipbasedsmart-card capable of holding much larger amounts of data. When theCommunications Ministry was finalizing its specification for the new ID Cards inJanuary 2004, it was announced that the first major batch of the cards would be issuedto citizens in the three provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat from April that year.The Government intends that the card should hold biometric information, andconsideration is being given to what other information it should contain. There havebeen arguments over the inclusion of individual social security records, medical recordsand DNA profile, although the plan to include medical records and DNA informationwas eventually dropped, as was the indication of a card-holder’s religious affiliation. 143The principal reason for the roll-out of this new technology in the troubled SouthernProvinces can be found in the unease the Thai government feels about its Muslim-Malay population. Many people in the Patani region still have family-contacts acrossthe border in Malaysia, and dual citizenship is a widespread phenomenon, though notrecorded by either state. Thai officials have long complained that insurgents/ banditscan too easily slip across the border and find refuge in Malaysia, and they want toeliminate dual citizenship in the region. The Government now intends to create a DNAdatabase of all suspected militants in the region, and of all teachers at private Islamicschools. 144 Both the Thai Law Society and the National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) have expressed concerns and pointed out that the collection of DNA samplesmust be on a voluntary basis. 145140 ‘Premier promises to abide by justices’ ruling on fingerprinting’, Dennis Engbarth, Taiwan News, May 26, 2005.141 ‘Grand Justices suspend fingerprinting program’, Dennis Engbarth, Taiwan News, June 11, 2005.142 For a full account of the Thai state’s use of IT to control it’s citizens, see: Pirongrong Ramasoota (1998):‘Information technology and bureaucratic surveillance: a case study of the Population Information Network (PIN) inThailand’ in Information Technology for Development, 8, pp51-64.143 The final word on what data to include on the chip has not yet been spoken though, since the winning bid tomanufacture the cards was deemed to high and a new round of bidding for the contract meant a delay in their roll-outof over a year.144 It would also seem that one element in arresting such a large number of Muslim men in Tak Bai on October 25 th2004 was to collect DNA samples from all of them, as the forensics expert Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan had been sentfrom Bangkok to Pattani specifically to collect DNA samples – before it transpired that so many detainees had died incustody. see URL: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2004/10/28/national/index.php?news=national_15214003.html145 The Nation, 12/10/2004.