Jan 30 2005
Iraqi election fingerprint scam
I’m glad the elections in Iraq went well — even though more than 30 people died as a result of anti-democracy attacks. Hopefully the high voter turnout is a sign that things will soon improve for the beleaguered nation.
But am I the only one who sees the requirement to provide a fingerprint as proof of voting as a way to happily scam people into providing personal information so the authorities can build a thorough database on all of its citizens?
The argument is that if you have nothing to hide, then why would you resist? Clearly those who subscribe to this point of view have read neither Kafka nor Orwell.
4 Comments on “Iraqi election fingerprint scam”
Irak government or USA authorities? :) The base will be shared, you can be sure.
???
I think they only dipped 1 finger into an ink thing.
They only got 1 fingertop colored. That’s all.
They did not give any fingerprint.
That’s what I read. And that’s how it usually works with UN and stuff. Non erasable* ink is only used as a proof so that voters can only vote once.
*: it appears it is quite easy to erase when it is still fresh.
The comment under the picture says otherwise…
“The voters have to give a fingerprint and the blue ink insures that they only vote one time.”
“Voters had their right index finger dipped in ink as a safeguard against voting fraud, then dropped paper ballots into boxes.”
I am surprised if it was so. It was different in Afghanistan.
If they got fingerprints, you can be sure some people are going to get some visit soon…
Realistically, I doubt they were “collecting” fingerprints, if for no other reason than because there was probably no obligation to provide a CLEAR print. In other words, a smudge would be as good as a usable print. Also, I doubt there was any effort to correlate the prints with the people using them.
So there. I’ve contradicted myself. My real point, I suppose, is that I was suprised no one else brought the issue up. Also, a conspiracy theorist (certainly not me!) might argue that this is part of a longer process designed to get people used to being fingerprinted, which would increase the odds of someday being able to build a clandestine fingerprint database.