The GCC ID

Saw this link: Saudis, sovaldi sale Omanis Can Visit Each Other Without Passports. Which is great finally Saudi is opening up their borders and joining the rest of the GCC countries in the passport optional borders.

Then I read down to this paragraph stating that we will soon have a universal ID for all GCC countries:

Plans are also under way to issue a unified GCC identity card. The new electronic card will use smart card technology with common security features, applications and accessing devices. The main feature of the card, which will have both the GCC and the member country’s logos, is the “interoperability,” making its features readable in all member states.

This will be very interesting approach. I am worried from a couple points on this.

  • Who will own the data?
  • This is going to be the major force on this, will the data for each ID be located in respective country, and then accessed when needed, or mirrored to each country, or the scary part having a central server with all this information.

  • What data be stored in the smart card?
  • Smart cards are secure to some degree but can be hacked and manipulated, and in the wrong hands someone can easily access all your data on them. Such as medical records, crimnal report, and other personal data.

I for one am all for a GCC ID. It will really help us in trade and touristic opputunities. I can go to any GCC country open a business or rent an apartment without hassle or issue.

4 thoughts on “The GCC ID”

  1. my cousin is a high ranking ministy of interior official, he says that the idea of a unified ID has been delayed several times because of many problems with databases, for example the first exchange was between saudi and the UAE, the saudi database is so huge that it the emaraties couldnt handle it, but the emarati database has been entered in saudi, thats why emaraties can enter saudi with their own civil ID but saudis can only enter the UAE by passports.
    There are also plans of unifying Muroor systems, u cant transfer tickets and other info to other countries unless they catch u when u try to re-enter a country u have a ticket in. The GCC are finally starting to act as a unified organization, not just an annual meeting where the leaders sleep through most of the meetings :P
    where the unified currency they were talking about!

  2. Yazeed then their database structures are broken. Each country has it’s own system and their own legacy.

    The only real solution that will help with scalability is to create a new database. Each country controls their own database and shares it with the others.

    To make things easier, each smart card can have like an MD5 Checksum. The data is stored in the card, but it sends a simple signature to the local database asking does this match with the with hosted one.

    Example:

    You are entering Saudi. You give your card to the guy. He plugs it in, and requests the Saudi database for verification. Since you never been to Saudi before it dosen’t know you. So it requests from the Kuwait database and it will send the data.

    The Saudi database then mirrors it for when you come back again. Then it just sends a simple checksum seeing if both data sets match.

  3. that should be ur next project :P
    u are already linking kuwaiti and saudi blogs, finish ur GCC blog work and u could start with the IDs :P

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