India Census: World's Biggest Headcount Includes Attempt To Photograph, Fingerprint All Adults

[onehandle]

Source: AP, Huffington Post

NEW DELHI — India began counting its billion-plus population Thursday, with 2.5 million census-takers fanning out across the country to photograph and fingerprint citizens for a new a database that will be used to issue its first national identity cards.

President Pratibha Patil joined the start of the 11-month exercise at her pink sandstone palace, which became the first household to be listed in the first phase of the census known as "house-listing."

Over the next six months, census-takers, or "enumerators," will travel across more than 630,000 villages and over 5,000 cities in the country to visit every structure that serves as a home to put together the national database.

From skyscrapers to tin shanties, census-takers will note details such as the availability of drinking water and electricity and the type of construction materials used for a comprehensive picture of housing in India.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/01/india-census-worlds-bigge_n_521224.html

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I kinda wish they would try photographing and fingerprinting everyone here for a national ID card. The reaction from teabaggers, militias, etc would be priceless.

[meow2u3]

1. Where is India going to store the pics and fingerprints for a billion people?

They're not going to have the room to fit all that info.

[cosmicone]

2. Yes, yes of course.

The stupid Indians never thought of how much space they will need before embarking upon such an exercise!!

Only we Americans know it is impossible to have so much database space.

:sarcasm:

[nyc 4 Biden]

3. The technology to store that amount of data is available.

These days you or I can buy a 2 TB drive for $160.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152205&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3watch&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3watch-_-Hard+Drives+-+External-_-SAMSUNG-_-22152205

ETA: Your post got me thinking...

The FBI standard for one fingerprint card is 10MB. http://wwwc3.lanl.gov/~brislawn/FBI/FBI.html

The population of India is 1,166,079,217 (2009 Estimate) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

1,166,079,217 x 10MB = 11,660,792,170MB = 11,387,492.35GB = 11,120.59TB(Terabytes)= 10.85PB (Petabytes) http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/

So forget the handful of Terabyte drives, they would use a Storage Server which is basically an array of hard drives linked together.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. How are they going to GET the prints? Are the census takers going to have...

a fingerprint kit?

Just a thumbprint might do for an ID card, though, when they figure out how to get it.

[Rebubula]

4. LOLZ

Perhaps you have heard of this great invention called the COMPUTER??

Busting your chops aside...I am against the mandatory collection of fingerprints - just in case I decide to enter a Life of Crime. :)

[TreasonousBastard]

5. The reaction from DU might be as bad, considering some...

of the Census comments I've seen.

[onehandle]

8. I wasn't going to go there, but... It would likely be just as comical. nt

[LiberalFighter]

7. They are not going to collect DNA?

[RollWithIt]

9. I hate the idea of a national ID card myself.... but whatever... nt