Today, I learned that:
There are so many things that need be improved in this world. Too many people endure bad conditions to live, to eat, …, in short, to exist!
And although everyone has a name, it is not always officially known and registered. In my post on 2017-04-01, I talked about the Swedish system for registration of its population, which made a quantum leap in 1947, when the civic registration number was introduced.
Here in Brazil, there is no unified system of identification. There is one system for identity cards, exercised in the different states of the union, named RG (Registro Geral, “General Register”), another one by the federal tax authorities, called CPF (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas, “Register of Physical Persons”), a third one run by the election authorities, called título de eleitor (“Elector Title”), an important document, since everyone between 18 and 70 years are compelled to vote, and also one for approved vehicle drivers, CNH (Carteira Nacional de Habilitação, “National Registers of Approved Drivers”).
TSE, which is the federal main organ of the election authorities, is worried about the difficulty in identification of the voters, and is therefore trying to re-register all their electors including also biometric identification. This process goes slowly, there are only a handful of all the states which have concluded the re-registration process so far. But last week, the Senate of the Brazilian Parliament approved the creation of a new document of identification, ICN (Identificação Civil Nacional,”National Civic Identification”). It will use the data base of TSE and add to that the other documents I mentioned. The Senate also approved the creation of a new identity card, DIN (Documento de Identificação Nacional, “Document of National Identification”), that would be emitted using the ICN data. However, it is said that the President of the Republic will not sanction the creation of DIN. See also reference #1 below.
But even if TSE eventually manages to conclude their registry, will that guarantee impartial elections? Of course not, who controls that the voting machines used in the elections are not manipulated? Radio Sweden’s program P4 Världen yesterday presented a Dutch white hat hacker, Sijmen Ruwhof, who showed how easy it is was to hack the Dutch totalization process after the most recent parliamentary elections and thus forced a manual recounting of all the votes. See references #2 and 3 below.
Sijmen Ruwhof lecturing on cyber security
By the way, here is a photo which was taken on the Chinese Wall in Juyongguan, 50 km northeast of Beijing, exactly 12 years ago, 2005-04-16.
The Chinese Wall north of Beijing, China. Photo taken on 2005-04-16.
… That’s what I learned in school !
Refs.:
1: Senado aprova criação de base de dados nacional para identificação de cidadãos
2: Turkisk choklad, nordkoreanskt påskägg och möte med holländsk hackare
What did you learn in School today? 
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