By Ankit Panda
The Pakistani government is embarking on a major biometric data collection effort to fight terrorism.
A Washington Post report released earlier this week shed light on the Pakistani government’s incredibly ambitious plan to make it impossible to own a cellphone without providing biometric data to the government. As part of its plan, the Pakistani government will force phone service providers to terminate service for anyone who fails to provide fingerprints for use in a national database. As the report details, the government initiative is an outside-the-box attempt to make terrorism preventable and detectable in Pakistan. Pakistan suffers scores of deadly terror attacks every year at the hands of radical militant groups. Although the Pakistani military embarked on a major anti-terror offensive last year, Pakistan’s police and security apparatus remains woefully unequipped to prevent attacks.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority estimates there are at least 136 million cellphone subscribers in Pakistan. Pakistan, like other South Asian states, has witnessed explosive growth in personal cellphone ownership; in 2003 only 5 million Pakistanis owned cellphones.
Nawaz Sharif’s government has been under considerable pressure to appear strong on terrorism ever since the Taliban brutally murdered over 100 Pakistani school children at a school in Peshawar. If Sharif’s government wanted to show every Pakistani household that it was doing something, it chose the right way to do it. Pakistanis far and wide have taken notice of the government plan and are lining up to provide fingerprints lest they lose their connectivity. According to the report, “53 million SIMs belonging to 38 million residents have been verified through biometric screening.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat