Hi, I am one of the people in the group, fighting many fronts of digital rights in Israel, primarily the National BioDB, SLAPP cases and attempts to censor the internet.
The Digital Rights Movement Organization was founded following the initial law proposal of the National BioDB.<p>After dragging the implementation of Smart IDs, law enforcement started to push the coupling of Smart IDs with a mandatory bio-info database of finger prints and facial images.
According to the officials, the database is supposed to prevent duplicate ID issuance, but they bluntly disregarded warnings and alternative solutions from known scientists and security experts, such as Prof. Adi Shamir and Eli Biham, saying they are "self-proclaimed experts".<p>7 years into the bio-metric saga, 3 years+ after the initiation of a should-have-been-voluntary "pilot" program, the Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri, said he will make the DB mandatory, with an optional Opt-out for fingerprints.
The current citizen registry was leaked for a century since 1996, over and over again, most of the time through the same channels, official sub-contractors. But the officials in-charge claim that the BioDB is secured and will never be hacked, which they know can't be promised.<p>So far the citizens have voted with their fingers, and about 70% of the citizens who renewed their ID card in the "pilot" period refused the BioDB. hopefully they will continue standing straight saying no2bio.
Very good. The Israeli government is light years away from the private sector - most of their sites still require IE < 9 to provide data to citizens legibly. I wouldn't trust them with my biometric data if my life depended on it, and it could...