ABSTRACT
The international growth of schemes for national registration and identification systems (ID systems in short) has been very rapid and touches rich and poor countries alike. Where such systems are established their use of personal data from multiple sources contributes to a major expansion of surveillance capacities, whatever their specific functionalities. This is accentuated by the ongoing shift from paper to digitally-enabled documents. However, the speed and spread of ID card proposals and schemes suggests that factors other than endogenous governmental aspirations to streamline administrative arrangements are involved. In what follows we explore those other factors.
