Kuwait Backtracks On Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens And Visitors

from the this-is-why-it's-always-worth-protesting dept

A few weeks ago, we reported on a move by some public-spirited lawyers in Kuwait to challenge an extraordinary new law that would require everyone in the country -- citizens and visitors like -- to provide their DNA for a huge new database. It seemed like a quixotic move, since the Kuwaiti authorities were unlikely to be intimidated by a bunch of lawyers. And yet Kuwait has indeed backed down, as reported by New Scientist:

Kuwait plans to scale down, and may ultimately revoke, a law forcing all its citizens and visitors to provide samples of their DNA.

As well as the legal moves, a request from the country's ruler, the Emir of Kuwait, that the law should be revised in a way that would "safeguard people's privacy" seems to have led to a massive scaling-back of the plans:

The Kuwait parliament has now agreed to change the law so that only suspected criminals will need to give their DNA.

Although taking DNA from "suspected" -- not convicted -- criminals is still problematic, overall, this is welcome news, especially for visitors to the country, who presumably won't now have their DNA sampled. It's also a reminder that public outcry, especially on a global scale, can occasionally succeed in getting really bad laws revoked, which is why it is always worth trying.

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Filed Under: databases, dna, kuwait, privacy, surveillance, tourists

Local Lawyers Challenge New Kuwaiti Law Creating Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens And Visitors

from the hands-off-my-genome dept

One of the most extraordinary government surveillance projects in the world is being rolled out in Kuwait, and involves creating a mandatory DNA database of all citizens and visitors. An article in New Scientist confirms that the system is now under construction:

The government has already begun to enact the law, collecting samples from people they suspect of having falsely claimed Kuwaiti nationality, as well as members of the police and military. From November, all Kuwaitis wishing to renew passports will have to submit DNA samples, while the country's embassies around the world have been told to notify potential visitors that they will be required to give a DNA sample upon arrival in the country.

The good news is that a bunch of public-spirited Kuwaiti lawyers are fighting back:

When the law was passed in July last year, Adel AbdulHadi of the Kuwaiti law firm Adel AbdulHadi & Partners and his colleagues began researching and drafting their challenge to it. Their principal argument is that the law violates privacy and human rights provisions in the country's own constitution, as well as those enshrined in international treaties to which Kuwait is a signatory.

To their credit, the lawyers are funding the challenge themselves, as they feel so strongly that the law should be struck down.

As the article points out, collecting DNA is hardly likely to be a very effective way of deterring would-be terrorists from entering the country. Equally, finding someone's DNA at the site of a terrorist explosion tells you little: by their very nature, such attacks cause tissues from bombers and victims alike to be scattered widely, making forensic DNA analysis difficult. On the other hand, there is considerable scope for abuse:

DNA samples could be used for other purposes, such as identifying illegal immigrants, or determining paternity in country where adultery is a punishable offence.

The New Scientist article offers no views on how likely it is that the legal challenge will succeed. We can only hope that it does, because once such a system is successfully implemented in one country, others are sure to see it as an example that they can follow.

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Filed Under: dna, dna database, kuwait, monitoring, privacy, surveillance

Kuwait Creating Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens, Residents -- And Visitors

from the makes-you-want-to-spit dept

A growing number of articles on Techdirt attests to the fact that the use of DNA is becoming commonplace in many fields, thanks to the continuing drop in the costs of gathering and analyzing genetic material. As those costs fall, of course, so the temptation to roll out the use of DNA more widely increases. It looks like Kuwait has the dubious honor of being the first nation to require everyone's DNA -- including that of visitors to the country. The Kuwait Times has a frighteningly matter-of-fact article about the plan, which is currently being put into operation. Here's how the DNA will be gathered:

Collecting samples from citizens will be done by various mobile centers that will be moved according to a special plan amongst government establishments and bodies to collect samples from citizens in the offices they work in. In addition, fixed centers will be established at the interior ministry and citizen services centers to allow citizens give samples while doing various transactions.

Those who are not citizens of Kuwait will be sampled when they apply for residence permits:

Collection will done on issuing or renewing residency visas through medical examinations done by the health ministry for new residency visas and through the criminal evidence department on renewing them.

As for common-or-garden visitors to the country:

Collection will be done at a special center at Kuwait International Airport, where in collaboration with the Civil Aviation Department, airlines and embassies, visitors will be advised on their rights and duties towards the DNA law.

"Rights and duties" basically means: "no DNA, no way Kuwait", since the article says elsewhere:

the test will be mandatory for visitors

The DNA will not be used for medical purposes, such as checking for genetic markers of disease, which will avoid issues of whether people should be told about their predisposition to possibly serious illnesses. Nor will the DNA database be used for "lineage or genealogical reasons." That's an important point: a complete nation's DNA would throw up many unexpected paternity and maternity results, which could have massive negative effects on the families concerned. It's precisely those kinds of practical and ethical issues that advocates of wider DNA sampling and testing need to address, but rarely do.

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Filed Under: dna, dna database, genetic database, kuwait, privacy, tourism

The Latest In The 'Collect It All' Collection: An Entire Nation's DNA

from the adding-more-hay dept

"Collect it all": for the NSA, it is communications data; for Kenya, it is information about every Wi-Fi user and device. For Kuwait, as Yahoo News reports, it's everyone's DNA:

Kuwait's parliament, reacting to a suicide bombing last week that killed 26 people, adopted a law Wednesday requiring mandatory DNA testing on all the country's citizens and foreign residents.

The legislation, requested by the government to help security agencies make quicker arrests in criminal cases, calls on the interior ministry to establish a database on all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents.

Kuwait seems to be pretty serious about implementing this scheme. Refuse to give samples? That will cost you $33,000 and a year in jail. Try to pass off someone else's DNA as your own? Make that seven years in jail. Setting up the DNA database won't be cheap, but an extra $400 million has been allocated by Kuwait's parliament:

"We have approved the DNA testing law and approved the additional funding. We are prepared to approve anything needed to boost security measures in the country," independent MP Jamal al-Omar said.

Following the high death toll in the suicide bombing, there is a natural desire to do something to stop it happening again, and to help catch those behind it. But the move to collect everyone's DNA seems to be born mostly from an opportunistic government desire to exploit tragic events to bring in extreme laws without much resistance.

After all, how exactly will having everyone's DNA in a database prevent future suicide bombings? Yes, it might help with the rapid identification of the bomber(s) and victims. That's useful, but hardly justifies an unprecedented collection of everyone's DNA. And it may help resolve other crimes, particularly rape, which will be welcomed by the victims. But if DNA becomes a standard tool in everyday criminal cases, having everyone's DNA may actually hinder investigations because of false positives. We are all shedding DNA everywhere we go, so the presence of somebody's genetic material at the scene of a crime probably means nothing (and could even be an attempt to frame someone, which becomes much easier.) But it will require the police to eliminate all those genetic bystanders, which is likely to slow down the investigation.

In this respect, it's the classic needle-in-a-haystack data problem, but applied to the world of genomes. Just as adding more hay does not help you find those proverbial needles, so increasing the size of the DNA database to encompass the entire population does not generally make it easier to find the perpetrator of a crime. In fact, smaller, more selective DNA databases are more sensible, just as targeted surveillance is more effective. With luck, Kuwait's future discovery of this fact, and its failure to draw much benefit from this massive intrusion into the most personal sphere of all -- the genome -- will make other governments think twice before following suit.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

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Filed Under: collect it all, dna, kuwait, privacy, surveillance

Kuwait's Decision To Jail People For 'Insulting' Tweets Sets A Dangerous Precedent

from the not-good-for-freedom dept

Kuwait has generally been a much more open and free society than some of its neighbors in the region, but there's been troubling news lately concerning the decision to put a man in jail for two years for a tweet "insulting the emir" followed quickly by another man getting the same sentence for the same offense. The news reports I've seen have not reported what the tweets actually said, but no matter what, this kind of censorship of political discourse is extremely troubling -- especially given the country's reputation for being more open to political dialogue.

"We've been taken by surprise because Kuwait has always been known internationally and in the Arab world as a democracy-loving country," Humidi said. "People are used to democracy, but suddenly we see the constitution being undermined."

Of course, this is why we were so horrified by a French politician's recent efforts to ask Twitter to help censor tweets for what French government officials deemed "hate speech." Where do you draw the line? Who defines what kind of "hate speech" is being censored. I am sure that the Kuwaiti emir considers the insults directed his way a form of "hate speech," and, from there, you quickly slide into blatant political censorship.

Of course, this seems only likely to backfire in a big way. As more and more people get used to being able to discuss things freely, when a government cracks down on such free speech, they're going to react negatively. Considering that many other countries in that region have used social media as a tool to organize protests and even to eventually overthrow a few governments, it would appear that overly sensitive Kuwaiti officials might want to learn to get thicker skins and learn that the best way to deal with "insulting" speech is to just ignore it.

Filed Under: emir, free speech, kuwait
Companies: twitter

If You Meet A Censor, Ask Why They Haven't Become Moral Degenerates Themselves

from the simple-questions dept

Last year, we wrote about one of China's chief censors, the creator of the Great Firewall of China, who did an interview where he talked about how important censorship was to protect people -- while also noting that he, himself, had five VPN accounts to get around the Great Firewall... for research purpose only (he promised). I'm reminded of this while reading an interview with a Kuwaiti censor who seems quite proud of her role in keeping horrible content from being consumed by people in Kuwait -- while also talking about how much she gets to learn in reading all this content.

I found out about this interview from Adam Thierer, who has a simple question he thinks every censor should be asked:

But here’s where the reporter missed a golden opportunity to ask Dalal the one question that you must always ask a censor if you get to meet one: If the content you are censoring is so destructive to the human soul or psyche, how then is it that you are such a well-adjusted person? And Dalal certainly seems like a well-adjusted person. Although the reporter doesn’t tell us much about her personal life or circumstances, Dalal volunteers this much about herself and her fellow censors: “Many people consider the censor to be a fanatic and uneducated person, but this isn’t true. We are the most literate people as we have read much, almost every day. We receive a lot of information from different fields. We read books for children, religious books, political, philosophical, scientific ones and many others.” Well of course you do... because you are lucky enough to have access to all that content! But you are also taking steps to make sure the rest of your society doesn’t consume it on the theory that it would harm them or harm public morals in some fashion. But, again, how is it that you have not been utterly corrupted by it all, Ms. Dalal? After all, you get to consume all that impure, sacrilegious, and salacious stuff! Shouldn’t you be some kind of monster by now?

Thierer goes on to posit that the "Third-Person Effect Hypothesis" explains the issue. It says that "people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others," while assuming, however, that they are somewhat immune to those effects. It's an interesting post, and that question should be used whenever anyone has the pleasure of meeting (or better yet, interviewing) an official government censor.

Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, kuwait, vpn

Kuwait Says Social Networks Must Be Regulated To 'Safeguard The Cohesiveness Of Society'

from the i-had-no-idea-it-was-at-risk dept

Apparently, an unregulated Twitter and Facebook might lead to society coming apart at the seams. At least that appears to be the somewhat ridiculous assertion of the Kuwaiti government as it prepares to regulate the usage of social networking sites, officially in order to "safeguard the cohesiveness of the population and society." Of course, that's silly. Social networking tools are used all the time to bring people together and to have discussions -- and also for less socially beneficial reasons. But the technology is just a tool for communication. By itself, it's neither good nor bad. Of course, given how those tools have been useful in larger protests and even regime changes around the Middle East over the past 18 months, one might guess that this new crackdown is a bit more about safeguarding the power of the existing government.

Filed Under: crackdown, kuwait, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter

Kuwaiti Blogger Sued After Negative Benihana Review

from the well-that'll-help dept

Slashdot points us to the news that the folks who manage a Benihana chain restaurant in Kuwait are apparently unfamiliar with the Streisand Effect. A Kuwaiti blogger, for the site 248am, wrote up a negative review of a newly opened Benihana restaurant, including a couple of videos he shot in the restaurant. The review seems perfectly fair. He liked some of the food, but found some of it to be really bad, such that he had no intention of going back. A day after the review appeared, a guy named Mike Servo, claiming to represent Benihana management in Kuwait wrote a comment on the blog complaining about the review and promising to sue. Here's just a snippet:

I also found it out that our rights and name is being used in a wrong way and broadcasting the video without a proper consent from us is really annoying specially Benihana is just opened up its doors to the public.

We are seeking and consulting our legal dept. on how we can form a type of law suit against your website to be brought up to the Kuwait authorities.

We respect opinion, but we see it in a way that Benihana name have been destroyed and abused on your website.

We are eager to know your name and meet you personally if you don’t have anything to hide.

Servo then interacts with several of the commenters who suggest (perhaps accurately) that he's being ridiculous. Rather than take that to heart, Servo apparently decided to push forward with the lawsuit, in which they set forth a conspiracy theory that the blogger was purposely trashing Benihana in connection with his job at an advertising agency. Either way, the blogger is fighting the lawsuit, saying that he doesn't believe the original post was libel at all. Hopefully the courts agree. An English translation of the original complaint is embedded below.

In the meantime, however, Benihana itself (beyond just the local franchise) has been getting a ton of attention over this issue. Not only has this decision to sue created a lot more attention for the negative review, but it's impacting the wider Benihana chain. I would argue that the negative publicity over a bogus lawsuit is likely to have a much larger impact than a single review involving a guy who got some bad chicken. Accidents like that happen. Suing a critic over a negative review is not an accident, but a specific decision, and the company is now paying the price for making such a decision that only serves to raise more questions about why anyone would support such a restaurant.

Filed Under: benihana, defamation, kuwait

Kuwait Bans Cameras With Big Lenses -- Because People Might Get Worried [Updated]

from the huh? dept

Update: And, um, this story just got odder as the original article has been updated to state that the reporter got it flat out wrong, and no such ban has been instituted by the Kuwaiti government. I'm not exactly sure how one goes about getting such basic information totally wrong, but consider the rest of this post here for posterity, rather than accuracy.

This one is just confusing. According to the LA Times, Kuwait has announced that cameras with big lenses (i.e., DSLRs) are banned for use in public in the country -- with an exception for "journalism purposes." If it seems unclear as to why DSLRs were singled out, while smaller point-and-shoots and camera phones are allowed, it appears that folks in Kuwait don't understand it either. The best they can come up with is that many people haven't been "exposed to art," and won't know what a big camera is for.

What most Kuwaiti photographers have come to wonder is how such a decision could be reached by authorities, especially considering that digital cameras and cell phone cameras have the same abilities. What most people think of photography as a hobby has become a bit misguided due to the fact that the country has so little exposure to art. While using a DSLR, passersby may wonder if the camera is being used for the wrong reasons.... What often happens is that a big black camera tends to worry people. Taking a picture of a stranger would seem like much less of an issue if you were using a more discreet camera or even a cell phone.

If you thought some laws in the US didn't make much sense, at least you can be happy knowing that other countries are even more bizarre.

Filed Under: bans, cameras, kuwait