Sponsoring Committee: Professor Helen Nissenbaum, Chairperson

Professor Benjamin Kafka

Professor John Torpey

FIXING IDENTITY:
A SOCIO-HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF STATE PRACTICES OF
IDENTIFICATION MEDIATED THROUGH
TECHNOLOGIES OF THE BODY

Travis Hall
Program in Media, Culture, and Communication
Department of Media, Culture, and Communication

Submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
New York University
2013

UMI Number: 3567278

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Copyright 2013 Travis Hall

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To say this project would not have been possible without the help
and support of a veritable village is an understatement, and the people
who made this dissertation possible are deserving of much greater
accolades and gratitude than I am going to be able to express here.
First, I would like to thank Helen Nissenbaum for being a steadfast
advisor and then chair of my dissertation committee. I quite literally
would not be the scholar I am today without her guidance,
encouragement, and support. The generosity she has shown with her
resources and the doors she has opened for me has been humbling, and is
an inspiration as to the kind of advisor I would like to become in the
future. She has given me both carrots and sticks, and I have needed each
to get through the project.
I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Ben Kafka for being a solid
rock that I could always rely on in my darker moments, and one of the
most insightful readers and conversation partners I have had. Ben has a
unique talent for seeing the conceptual diamond in the rough, and
bringing it out polished and concise as if it had always and obviously been
there. My work has been significantly smarter and more rigorous from
his involvement.

iii

John Torpey has been an inspiration through his work on the

history of identification, and has been kind and generous since the
moment I cold e-mailed him. He has opened several opportunities for me
that have since blossomed into significant aspects of my research agenda,
and I look forward to our future engagements.
Other faculty at the Department of Media, Culture, and
Communication deserve particular thanks. Erica Robles-Anderson and
Rhada Hedge gave extraordinarily insightful and productive feedback
during my Dissertation Proposal review, and Erica has continued to
provide amazing advice both theoretical and professional. Mara Mills has
been more open and compassionate with her time and advice than I could
have thought possible from the few times I happened across her open
door, and I look forward to her feedback during the defense. Brett Gary
oversaw the fetal stages of the project, and helped to mold its beginning
with concise and perceptive feedback. Helga Tawil-Souri and Martin
Scherzinger both read and significantly improved my chapter on the U.S.
Department of Defenses biometrics program, and Arjun Appadurai and
Arvind Rajagopal both indulged me in conversations about India and its
politics. Arjun was particularly gregarious and helped supply on-theground contacts I never could have made on my own. Lily Hope Chumly
introduced me both to texts I had not heard of and pointed me to the

iv

coolest pen and research tool ever. Charlton MacIlwain was the best RA
appointment I could have asked for, although I still have to fake my way
through quantitative methods. Alex Galloway, Allen Feldman, Ted
Madger, Ian Kerr, and Terrence Moran have all had a lasting and positive
impact on my work.
Keeping with my department at NYU, I want to give a particularly
loud and raucous shout-out to my cohort: Hatim El-Hibri, Marissa Dennis,
Sarah Stonbely, May Farah and Scott Selberg. You guys are awesome, and
Im so glad to have gone through the process with you. It would take
pages to go through everything and every way you helped me out, but I
hope that you know that I couldnt have done it without you. Your
families deserve thanks as well for letting me crash your lives on a regular
basis- Scott, Kale, Asher, Tania, John, George and baby Annie, you are
extended family for me. Solon Barocas is way too humble for the rock star
status he is going to achieve, and the same goes for Matt Powers. I think
its quite the feather in my cap that you both came to NYU, and I take full
credit. Max Liboiron is too much fun to have her research be so
depressing, even though I think it might be the most important work to
come out of our department. Robert Wosnitzer read my proposal and
gave amazing feedback. Everyone else in the cohorts that came before
and after me (Carolyn, Alice, Marco, Rochelle, Wazhmah, Tima, Jessica,

Cynthia, Paul, Magda, Naomi, Jamie, Kate, Patrick, Jacob, Kari, Liz,
Tamara, Lana, Beza, Aaron, James, Luke, Carlin, Ekin) have all been just
wonderful as well, and made the experience richer for their part.
Mary Taylor deserves her own line, because she is just that nice and
helpful.
I want to extend my gratitude to the amazing staff at the U.S.
Holocaust Museum archives for guiding me in my inept first attempts at
research, and for pointing me in all the right directions. Johnathan
Zimmerman provided excellent feedback on early versions of this chapter,
and Frederico Finchelstein taught the class that launched this part of the
project.
Special thanks go to Sarah Soliman for not only reading my chapter
on the DoDs biometrics program, but actually making the most
significant research moments happen. Her thoughtful advice, and
openness with her impressive connections and experience, made this
chapter possible. I want to thank Min Chong, John Woodward, Jr., Lt. Col
Thomas Pratt, Robert Manning, Paul Meehan, Christopher Miles, and
Stephen Cargo for explaining the militarys biometrics programs to me. A
huge thanks also goes out to Mike Kritikos for walking me through
military jargon and what a grunts-eye view looks like. David MurukamiWoods, Torin Monahan, Peter Adey, and Emmeline Taylor all provided

vi

extraordinarily helpful feedback on conference versions of this chapter.

The Privacy Research Group and all its members have provided a
wonderful incubator for various versions of my project, as well as insight
into the breadth and depth of scholarship (legal and social) on privacy
issues. Aaron Martin has been a good friend and supportive colleague. I
also want to thank Edward Comor, who led me to the academic path at
American University and whose classes and advice from that time
continue to shape my scholarship.
Arun Sundararajan deserves a much higher position in these
acknowledgements than my organizational structure allows. Without his
help and support my trip to India would have been spent hanging out in a
youth hostel waiting by the phone for someone to call me back, if I could
have even figured out how to get a phone number. His generosity with
his time and willingness to let me tag along still blows me away. I cant
wait for his feedback during the defense, and look forward to continued
conversations on the UID and cricket.
Aditi Raturi, Vivek Bhat, Jackie Walters, Kristin Salaya, and
Saurabh Palkar were wonderful traveling companions and tremendous
conversation partners during the first week of research in India. I want to
thank Nandan Nilekani, Siva Kumar, Bala Parthasarathy, Pramod Varma,
Salil Prabhakar, Ashok Dalwai, Sujata Chaturvedi and the staff of the

vii

Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore offices for their time and patience with
my questions. Reema Gupta was a gracious host at the International
Business School in Hyderabad and a fun travel companion, and the
students and staff at the International Business School were beyond
accommodating, particularly Arun Kumar, Lalita Reddi, Ramdurga
Sekhar, and Varun Parwal. Special thanks to Rahul Ahluwalia for
welcoming a random stranger in his dining room out for dinner, drinks
and philosophical conversation with his erudite and entertaining friends.
Malavika Jayaram helped provide on-the-ground details about criticism of
the project as well as a hilarious book on the subject. Thanks also to the
staff at Mother NGO for walking me through their humanitarian work
and the connections to the UID. I hope their kitten is doing well.
The final stages of my research were made possible by the Presidio
Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant, of which I am
thankful to have been a part. Allison Garforth was instrumental in
helping to administer the grant and walk me through the particulars of
the paperwork, and for getting a better camera than I asked for. Thanks to
the staff at NYU-DC and the staff of the Global Research Initiative for
providing a home for me for the final stages of writing. The National Day
Laborers Network, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Open
Society Foundation provided an opportunity to put my research to

viii

practical use regarding developments in the U.S. Governments biometrics

programs.
I want to thank the staff of the Capital Grille in Washington, DC for
helping me to pay my bills during my undergraduate, masters and now
PhD programs. This said it is my hope that finishing the dissertation
means I will not have to work there again.
Countless others have talked with me or supported me during this
project. In no particular order: Joe Macri, Maria Macri, Jessica Karp, Sonia
Lin, Ryan Patel, Maggie Patel, Max Raev, Arisha Dmitriyeva, Brad Wible,
Jillian Van Ells, John Hopewell, Erin Hodges, Zen Hunter-Ishikawa,
Ronald Tiu, Chaney Kwak, Marcus Decker, Leena Akhtar, Carl Berquist,
Jenjira Yahirun, Lindsay Brady, John Brady, Hwa Chae, Chris Dimotsis,
Lizzie Copson, Sarah Cypher, Michael Gramann, Gabby Miranda, Maria
Miranda, Hilery Lindmier, Bill Lindmier, Nancy Park, Zahid Rastam,
Syeila Syarifah, John Sherry, Miyeko Mana, Erin Crouch, and Julie Yeagle,
you all rock.
My family has been great, especially since it has now grown
through marriage. Hank, Pam, Joe, Ginny, David, Leslie, Liz, Bryant,
Amy, Denny, Natasha, Paige, Shelby, the Danns, the Butchers, the Kaisers,
the Kleinfeldts, and all of my new family- thanks for helping to cheer me
on past the finish line.

ix

Uncle Roger, Melissa, John, Luke, Emma, Aunt Barbara, Uncle Jim,
Chris, Stephanie, Michael, Rory, and Violet- you have all been amazing in
your love and support. Chigusa, it is great to finish parallel with you- we
did it!! Mike, I look forward to welcoming you to the family in June.
Tabitha, youre awesome, and are actually changing kids lives. I couldnt
be prouder. Mom and Dad, you have been unwaveringly supportive and
wonderful.

The ethical heart of this project is yours. Thank you.

I want to particularly thank Todd, who has acted as my de facto

fourth committee member. My project has been so thoroughly shaped by
his input, he almost deserves some kind of authorship.
Finally, Faith Geraldine Mary Carol Lee Ann Cole Hall- you are my
rock and my inspiration, my editor and my favorite companion. You
make everything better and all the hard times worthwhile. This is
dedicated to you, and in many ways is just as much yours as it is mine. I
love you. Thank you.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure III-1: Child Displaying Auschwitz Tattoo

108

Figure IV-1: From the B-roll of the Freedom Watch Update

117

Figure IV-2: BIMA graph showing spectrum from Blue to Red with a thin
strip of Gray 154
Figure IV-3: USCENTCOM Venn diagram showing that the majority are
gray 154
Figure V-1: What Aadhaar Is and Isn't

191

Figure V-2: Posters from the UIDAI Technology Center in Bangalore, India
213
Figure V-3: Select screenshots from Aadhaar: A Short Film by Carrot
Communications 215
Figure V-4: Part of an NPR promotional pamphlet

217

Figure VI-1: Remains of the U.K. Identity Database

231

xi

LIST OF ACRONYMS
In order of appearance in the manuscript:
UDIAI
STS
UID
NPR
BIMA
FBI
DHS
DoD
CCTV
BMO
BFC
BATS
BISA
Iraqi AFIS
HIIDE
BTF
ABIS
NGIS
RMA
COIN
IED
USCENTCOM
NRC
IDF
MHA
RGI
BPL
POI
POA
NGO
CIDR
PDS
FPS
MNREGA
ACSAC

Unique Identification Authority of India

Science and Technology Studies
Unique ID program
National Population Register
Biometrics Identity Management Agency
Federal Bureau of InvestigationDepartment of Homeland Security
Department of Defense
Closed Circuit Television
Biometrics Management Office
Biometrics Fusion Center
Biometric Automated Toolset
Biometric Identification System for Access
Iraqi Automated Fingerprint Identification System
Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment
Biometrics Task Force
Automated Biometric Identification System
Next Generation Identification System
Revolution in Military Affairs
Counterinsurgency Doctrine
Improvised Explosive Device
US Central Command
National Research Council
Israeli Defense Forces
Ministry of Home Affairs
Register General of India
Below Poverty Line
Proof of Identity
Proof of Address
Non-Governmental Organization
Central Identities Data Repository
Public Distribution System
Fair Price Shop
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Act
Awareness and Communication Strategy Advisory Council

xii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

III

LIST OF FIGURES

XI

LIST OF ACRONYMS

XII

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: IDENTIFICATION AND THE STATE 1

Undocumented

Why Fix Identity?

Methodology

11

Chapter Summaries

19

CHAPTER II MEASURED LIVES: LITERATURE REVIEW AND

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

25

Process-ing

25

Bureaucracy and Surveillance

28

Identity, Biometrics, and Materiality

43

The Uneasy Prosthetic

59

CHAPTER III BODY, WHO ARE YOU? SHIFTING EPISTEMOLOGIES

OF IDENTIFICATION AND THE AUSCHWITZ TATTOO
66
Introduction: The Specter of the Tattooed Number

66

Legible Bodies: A Brief Historical Review of the Tattoo in Europe

69

The Tattoo in Auschwitz

88

Conclusion: The Anachronism of the Biopolitical Tattoo

108

CHAPTER IV ENABLING ARMED SOCIAL WORK: THE

DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF BIOMETRIC
TECHNOLOGIES BY THE UNITED STATES MILITARY IN IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN
117
Introduction: Identity and Barbed Wire

117

Identity Dominance and Management: A Brief Timeline of DoD

Biometrics

122

xiii

Competing Doctrines

137

Red, Blue, and Gray

147

Conclusion: The Persistent Fog

168

CHAPTER V CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION: INDIAS BIOMETRICS

PROGRAMS AND THE POWER OF THE EXCEPTION
171
Introduction: Competing Platforms

171

Identity in India

176

Radical Transformations: Flexible Fixed Subjectivities

197

Lighting Up the Darkness: Identification as Social Inclusion

212

Conclusion: Poverty Premiums

224

CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION: UNFIXED

227

The Future is Now

227

Future Research: State Forgery

236

BIBLIOGRAPHY

241

xiv

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION:
IDENTIFICATION AND THE STATE
Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow
the correct procedures?
-Sam Lowry, Brazil

Undocumented
I would like to begin my dissertation with a simple thought
experiment. What if, through some kind of dictatorial or democratic
decree, governments were not allowed to identify anyone? No ID cards,
no fingerprinting, no passports, no serial numbers, no birth or death
certificates. What would happen?
First, society would not collapse. Identification as we currently
understand it is much too young, only a bit over a century or two years
old depending on how you want to measure it, and lack of any stable
form of identity documentation is the norm in what Partha Chatterjee calls
most of the world, i.e. the poor of the global south, and yet life and

government seem to have gotten along fine regardless.1 Yet this

hypothetical ban of identification would certainly make the contours of
modern statecraft subtly different. Policies that discriminate based on
social factors that are hard to delimitate at their borders such as age and
even possibly race would be difficult to enforce. The criminal justice
system would certainly not fall apart, but investigations would be more
difficult across jurisdictions and laws that account for past actions (Three
Strikes, leniency for first time offenders, etc.) would be impossible to
administer. Things could be licensed (cars, guns) but not people. Welfare
could not be distributed based on need, unless some clever way of
proving income and assets that does not rely on identity is created.
Perhaps most disruptive would be the effects on conceptions of
citizenship and nationality, as control of movement would be based solely
on policing borders, as once a person is inside a territory there would be
no way of knowing from whence they came. Enforcement of property
rights would also be more difficult and complex. The relationship
between the state and individuals would continue, but would be based on
temporally and spatially specific interactions that would require new (or
rather, old?) configurations of control and power.

Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed : Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the
World, Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures (New York: Columbia University
Press).
1

This admittedly simple and generalized thought experiment

highlights the role that the identification technologies of the state play in
enabling particular formulations of social and governmental structures
that are often taken as universal and/or at least fundamental to
modernity. Despite the historical contingency of these programs, the
current penetration of identification technologies in an increasing number
of social contexts and situations is seen as not only positive, but not yet
sufficient. As stated by Charles Kenney in an article titled The Case for
Big Brother,
Yet nearly all of us still carry IDs (the Amish honorably excepted).
Driver's licenses, social security cards, passports, and birth
certificates are vital in the modern world. If you want to open a
bank account, buy a house, claim pension payments, vote, drive, or
travel across a border, you need a recognized, legal identification.
This is a good thing For all the justifiable concerns, the bottom
line is that the rapid global spread today of more robust ID systems
-- powered by new technologies that use high-tech personal
features from fingerprints to brain waves -- is great news.2
The IEEE, in their materials used to train Certified Biometrics
Professionals, states that:
Biometric systems are an effective instrument for personal
identification, and there would be no rights, no liberty, without
verifiable personal identities. People can claim their rightsincluding the right to be left alone, the right to keep certain
personal information private, and the right to refuse to be

Charles Kenney, "The Case for Big Brother," Foreign Policy, March/April.

identified- only if they are identifiable subjects, i.e. if they are

identified.3
In other words, identification is vital to the modern world and in need
of further advancement through global spread and technological
innovation. Identification practices need to be fixed- they are not yet
universal, not yet solid enough, and the identities they document are still
too fluid (prone to fraud, duplication, or multiplicity).
Through my dissertation, I place the perceived necessity of
governments to identify their subjects the apparent inevitability of these
projects into historical context. In this study, I focus on technologies that
use bodies as the media of identification, specifically tattoos and a
constellation of technologies called biometrics.4 The three-part question
that drives my research is: Why do states (1) identify (2) using
technologies of the body and (3) with what effect? In the following
section, I sketch out the basic framework of my answer to these questions,
and introduce the specific programs I have studied to flesh out this
inquiry.

IEEE, "Certified Biometrics Professional Learning System: Module 5 Social, Cultural and
Legal Implications," ed. IEEE (Eagan, MN).
4 Biometrics, according to the International Organization for Standardization and the
International Elecrotechnical Commission (the standards bodies governing biometric
technologies internationally) is the automated recognition of individuals based on their
behavioral and biological characteristics. This includes technologies such as facial
recognition, fingerprinting, gait, and signature recognition, among others. ISO/IEC,
"Information Technology- Vocabulary- Part 37: Biometrics," in JTC 1 (ISO/IEC).
3

Why Fix Identity?

The signifiers of identity carry with them powerful symbolic
weight. They are the tokens of acceptance and of stigma, of oppression
and of freedom, of self and of otherness. That our bodies take prominence
in this constellation of signs is intuitively reasonable; our bodies are the
ultimate mediators of interaction with the physical world and with others.
Despite the radical transformations of age, disease, violence, or alterations
of choice, the lived experience of our bodies is generally one of irreducible
continuity. The duration of our lived experience is inescapably tied to a
single body, and it is through this body that we know and are known to
the world.
This is not to make some kind of deep philosophical point, or to try
to brush away all the ink that has been spilled on the relationship between
mind, body, self, and other. It is a simplified statement with particular
epistemological biases that universalizes subjective experience, albeit in a
way that is broad enough to not leave all that much room for contestation.
The reason to explicitly state this truism is because the universality and
inescapability of the link between a person and a single body is the
ontological basis for modern identification programs. The goal is such: to
each individual a single identity, made traceable, discrete and concrete by
its indelible link to a body.

Modern forms of governance and the anxiety created from

deviation drives the perceived need for identification. For example,
giving out a certain amount of food to individuals requires that the
charitable agency distinguish between individuals to ensure that each
person only gets their share. It is possible to do so through any manner of
governmental tools, such as marking those who have received their
serving, distributing food through a local contact who knows each
individual personally and tracks allotments of food, or distributing punch
cards. Instead of merely needing to distinguish one individual from
others at a fixed moment, a foundational element of modern governance is
the states need to establish that the individual is unique and traceable
over time and across numerous administrative needs. The state must, in
the words of John Torpey, grasp the individual as an individual.5
Identification is on of the core media through which the relationship
between the individual and the state is both managed and made manifest.
The need for the state to engage with individuals is largely the
result of ostensibly progressive reforms. When benefits are targeted
towards those particular populations, often based on thresholds of need,
recipients must be isolated from those who would seek to abuse the

John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport : Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State,
Cambridge Studies in Law and Society (Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge
University Press).
5

system and take what is not allocated to them. As qualifications are added
food can only be given to citizens, and only those citizens earning below
a certain income, and only in particular groups defined by disadvantage
or vulnerability- additional layers of surveillance are required.
Identification technologies developed for criminals followed a similar
evolution. In order to levy more lenient sentences against first time
offenders, those without a criminal record had to be separated from
recidivists. Once this stage of early identification techniques was fully
implemented, it uncovered an epidemic of recognized recidivists. This in
turn caused an unanticipated shift for the field from focusing on leniency
for those who deserved it to exposing those who did not.6 Establishing
who merits life, help, and assistance inevitably involves a separation
from- and creation of - categories of individuals who are not.
The problem with universal truisms is that they remain such only
when maintained in the abstract when they are broad and simple enough
to remain outside the necessary exceptions and messiness of praxis. That
the abstractions of governance force the obscuring of difference and
nuance, to the potential detriment of both the subjects and projects of the
state, is a well-trod path of inquiry.7 It is also a well established argument
Simon A. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 29-31.
7 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
Have Failed, Yale Agrarian Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press).
6

that technologies of identification are similarly representations that cut

away the fuzziness of bodies and the self to produce a legible identity.8
The question that I want to explore is: why does this matter? So what if
the promise of identification technologies does not match the reality of
their implementation?
At their core, identification technologies are based out of an
assumption of fraudulent claims. These technologies enable individuals
who have legitimate claims on rights or services to prove themselves, but
their raison d'etre is exposing individuals whose claims are illegitimate.
The fantasy of identification, encapsulated in Foucaults description of the
quarantined town, is the assignment of each individual his true name,
his true place, his true body, his true disease.9 Despite the best efforts
of governments to fix the identities of individuals, there will always
remain a percentage that fall outside, both intentionally through willful
circumvention and unintentionally through human error or systematic
technical and social problems. Biometric systems are probabilistic
technologies; their accuracy is constantly improving, but will never reach
100%. They are a form of rationalization that attempts to impose
See, for example, Shoshana Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the
Technology of Identity (Durham: Duke University Press); Kelly Gates, Our Biometric Future
: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance, Critical Cultural
Communication (New York: New York University Press); David Lyon, Surveillance as
Social Sorting : Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination (London ; New York: Routledge).
9 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison, 2nd Vintage Books ed.
(New York: Vintage Books).
8

scientific objectivity on the process of identification, yet so long as the

possibility of error exists, subjective decision-making remains essential.
Further, the smaller the possibility of slippage is, the greater the anxiety
about it will be.
A recorded link to all of ones activities and deeds is just as much
nightmarish as it is a governmental dream. Yet as Daniel Solove rightly
points out, the true dystopia of the surveillance state is not George
Orwells totalitarian Big Brother, but rather Franz Kafkas Castle or Trial;10
it is not omniscience we should fear, but rather the omnipotence of the
limited, contradictory, and arbitrary subjectivity of actual power that
should give us pause. That systems of technological surveillance are put
in place specifically to combat the ambiguity of human intervention
merely means that it is displaced into algorithms and protocols, and more
importantly, in deciding when the technologies are perceived to be
working and when they are not. Arguments about efficiency, both from
promoters and critics of identification technology, should always be
suspect. When asking how well a technology works, it must first be asked
what work it actually does. It is my argument that identification
technologies help to automate and legitimize decisions made by front-line
bureaucrats, but because the technologies can never be complete nor
Daniel J. Solove, The Digital Person : Technology and Privacy in the Information Age, Ex
Machina (New York: New York University Press).
10

perfect, the subjective experience of the subjects of identification will

always be contingent, arbitrary and ambiguous.
In historical practice the development, management, and ultimate
effects of identification programs are divergent and contextualized, even if
many of the logics and technologies share a common thread. For this
reason, I do not to follow a traditional case study model wherein similar
programs or technologies are compared. Rather, I have selected three
programs that are diverse in terms of their intended use, the technologies
deployed, and the historical and cultural contexts: tattooing in the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps during World War II, mobile
fingerprint and iris scanning by the United States military in Iraq and
Afghanistan in the 2000s, and the ongoing implementation of the Unique
ID project, which is to assign a unique number attached to biometric and
biographic data to all residents in India. The Auschwitz tattoo is
important to examine because it often used metaphorically in debates
about identification, but the actual details of its use are little studied,
particularly the fact that it was not used beyond the Auschwitz-Birkenau
complex, even in the rest of the concentration camp system. The
development and deployment of biometric technologies by the U.S.
military is provides an excellent example of an antagonistic or offensive
program that was nonetheless put in place through the implantation of a

10

military doctrine based on the identification and separation of populations

that were in need of protecting and governing. The Unique ID project is a
powerful case of a civil, domestic program that is intended to help its
marginalized populations and the hurdles such a program faces in
achieving its altruistic goals. Despite the significant differences between
each of these projects, there are nonetheless common themes, logics, and
concerns that arise.

Methodology
Questions of methodology are essentially questions of ethics: what
constitutes legitimate sources of knowledge; in what manner does one
ensure that truth has been rigorously sought; are there biases (cultural,
personal, temporal, etc.) that can be excised or taken into account?
Disciplines provide a kind of shorthand for normative stances in these
debates, with formal methodological tools being the granular precepts of
the disciplines respective epistemological maxims. What then does it
mean to approach a topic in an inter-disciplinary manner (as I am
inclined to do, both in training and temperament)? In part, the
advantages are clear; shrugging off disciplinary bounds enables the use
(and abandonment) of formal tools as they are useful, not as ends-inthemselves. More importantly, in taking an interdisciplinary approach I

11

do not intend to abdicate from the ethical issues of research and the
creation of knowledge. I find it necessary to deploy the theories of Media
Studies on objects that do not fit most definitions of media, the tactics of
historical research on scenarios that are still unfolding, and the insights of
Science and Technology Studies (STS) while abstaining from their
methodological approaches.
While I am hardly alone in this approach (the field which I am
trained in, Media Studies, is nothing if not inter-disciplinary), I think it is
important to be explicit in what I mean by claiming an interdisciplinary
methodology. I take seriously Jill Scotts argument that eclecticism
(another word for inter-disciplinarity) is often used to smooth over the
fundamental differences between disciplinary approaches and serves to
camouflage the scholars normative stances.11 Scott explicitly states that
she is by no means opposed to recombination, hybridity, or bricolage
(which she argues can be quite productive), but that she is opposed to
the coexistence of conflicting doctrines as if there were no conflict, as if
one position were not an explicit critique of another [whose] aim is to
ignore or overlook differences, to create balance and harmony, to close
down the opening to unknown futures. My donning of the mantle of
inter-disciplinarity is not for the creation of harmony out of dissonant
Scott, Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed.
11

12

doctrines, but rather because I believe that the questions I pose cannot be
answered easily within disciplinary boundaries.
My methodological tools focused primarily on archival research
and the analysis of publicly available documents, supplemented by
interviews when possible. I spent a summer at the U.S. Holocaust
Museum studying their archives and secondary sources. I attended
biometrics industry events and interviewed both producers and
consumers of the technology. I researched the U.S. Militarys biometrics
programs though publicly available documents and congressional
hearings and reports, and interviewed current and former members of the
biometrics agencies in both the public and private sector. I supplemented
this research with documents and interviews with the staff of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), as these agencies are currently working with the Department of
Defense (DoD) to create an interoperable biometric database. I spent two
weeks in India traveling to Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore to visit and
interview the leadership teams of the regional, national and technical
offices of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). I
interviewed individuals in private industry and the non-profit sector
regarding the identification programs, and visited a community clinic and
homeless shelter that were actively involved in enrollments. I also read

13

the marketing and technical documents made public by both the UIDAI
and its competing program, the National Population Register. I
interviewed and read published works of critics of both the UIDAI and
DoD programs.
The way in which I approached these archives and interviews was
tempered by theoretical considerations taken from a broad range of
scholarship. To start, I attempted not to take the content of the archives as
the only source of research, but to also read along the archival grain, as
elegantly put by Ann Stoller. In other words, I plan to take the archive as
both site and object of research.12 I feel that this is particularly important
as the archives I studied contain records regarding decisions about
biometric technologies, as well as archives of the actual biometrics
themselves (fingerprints, faces, tattoos, etc.). Biometrics is a technology
that creates an archive of itself. Not attempting to read the grain of
these records would be to miss a primary source of embedded power
relations. This meant understanding how biometric technologies work
both in terms of the artifacts themselves, as well as the policies dictating
their usage. In order to properly read the grain of the biometrics
programs, I became an IEEE Certified Biometrics Planner, passing a
rigorous test on the standards, protocols and technologies currently used.
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain : Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common
Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
12

14

This knowledge is not a focus of the dissertation. My approach to this

topic is not particularly inclined to the type of STS work that would be so
thoroughly invested in the granular study technological networks, but
detailed technical knowledge helped greatly to inform and guide both my
research and interviews.
The primary focus of my dissertation is a loose grouping of
technological practices, sorted more by purpose (the identification of
individuals by their bodies) than by any technical verisimilitude. I look at
these technologies less as mere artifacts than as particular assemblages of
governance techniques. In this, I follow the insights of STS in assuming that
both artifacts and people can be imbued with (or devoid of) agency within
a given technological system, although I did not take on their
methodological call to abandon theoretical frameworks of understanding
before diving into the development process (as argued most famously by
Bruno Latour).13
The observation that technological systems, particularly those of
surveillance, are assemblages that combine and disassemble, and whose
whole is more than its parts can be traced primarily back to Giles

See Bruno Latour, Science in Action : How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through
Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press); Reassembling the Social : An
Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies (Oxford
; New York: Oxford University Press).
13

15

Delueze,14 but has been productively advanced by Kevin Haggerty and

Richard Ericson.15 Biometric technologies do not occur in a developmental
vacuum, but rather that they are created and deployed alongside (and at
times against) other technologies, policies, and governmental paradigms.
My description of biometrics as an assemblage of governance
techniques to fully incorporates Foucaults broad definition of
technologies of governance as including physical structures and artifacts,
as well as discourses of power (his most famous example being the
Panopticon- which was, according to Foucault, both an architectural
design and a metaphor for power through intermittent surveillance).16 In
this manner, the particular conceptions of identity as constructed by
bureaucracies are just as much a technology of governance as the
fingerprint scanners themselves. The components of biometric
assemblages are thus not limited to the potential for multi-modal usage
(fingerprints AND iris scans, for example), or even to the larger technical
systems that include the operators and analysts, but rather encompass the
ontological and epistemological constructs that enable the particular
deployments of these technologies as well.

Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia

University Press).
15 Kevin D. & Ericson Haggerty, Richard V., "The Surveillant Assemblage," British Journal
of Sociology 51, no. 4.
16 Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison.
14

16

That said, I do not want to diminish in my research the importance

of the artifices and artifacts of biometrics. Following both trends in STS
and in particular versions of Media Studies called Media Archaeology (for
example, the work of Friedrich Kittler),17 I practice a radical materiality in
my research. By this, I mean to say that have studied the ways in which
actual bodies and the artifacts of biometrics interact, how things break
down or need to be fixed, and how the black boxes of design translate
into practices of use. While I did not conduct an ethnography of practice,
the questions of materiality as it actually exists materially is prominent in
my studies and interviews. It is a necessary remedy to the discussion of
bodies, databases and the technologies of identity that construct the
respective materiality (or lack) of each as being inherent, immutable
characteristics and not negotiated/contested relations of power.
Perhaps the most important methodological decision I have made
has been to write not about a single event or phenomena, but rather to
trace the technologies of biometrics through disparate locales, logics, and
temporalities: the use of tattoos to identify prisoners at the AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camp, the deployment of biometrics offensively
in Iraq by the United States military, and the collection of biometric

Latour, Reassembling the Social : An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory; Friedrich A.

Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Writing Science (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press).
17

17

information of its citizens by the Indian Government through competing

identification programs. While I will shortly describe in detail the
purposes and scope of each of these cases, I think it is important to first
mount a defense of the historical bricolage.
In some ways, my work can be categorized as a genealogical
discourse analysis, as pioneered by Nietzsche in the Genealogy of Morals,
institutionalized by Foucault with The Archaeology of Knowledge and his
article Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, and actively practiced by
countless others.18 In essence, this means that instead of attempting to
construct a linear narrative of progress and direct causation, I focus on the
structures of power as they mutate, fail, or are pushed to their limits. As
such, I am less interested in drawing a clear line between my case studies,
wherein there is historical progression from one to the other, than in
exploring the way in which the drive for identification played out in
various contexts and in service to radically different projects. Somewhat
in contrast to Foucaults project, which sought out little known but
historically vital turning points in discourses of power, I am more
interested in the limnal points of failure, of governmental trial-and-error.
I probe the manner in which governance constitutes itself through its
Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York City: Pantheon Books); Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneaology of
Morals and Ecce Homo ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York City: Vintage Books); Michel
Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge Classics (London ; New York: Routledge).
18

18

technologies, in spite of and through the limitations of these technologies.

For this reason, although the study of the practice of tattooing in
Auschwitz-Birkenau is decidedly historical, the use of biometrics in Iraq
and Afghanistan is ongoing but beginning to enter a new and different
phase now that formal U.S. engagement in those conflicts is coming to an
end, and the Indian biometrics programs are just beginning to ramp up.
Each presents a unique permutation of the same drives, problems, and
limitations to attempts at using identification technology to solve
essentially social problems. To focus on just one of these cases, while
certainly possible given the depth of each, would nonetheless grant
insight into only one historical iteration of what I see to be a larger
pattern, a structural drive that permeates the bureaucratic governance of
modern societies in the most extreme and mundane of activities.

Chapter Summaries
This section will summarize each of the following chapters,
highlighting both their topic and the significant takeaways of each.
Chapter II is a brief literature review and outline of my theoretical
framework. Its primary purpose is to set out some of the common themes
of the dissertation and to contextualize the concepts used in their
respective bodies of literature. This chapter should not be seen as a

19

definitive or exhaustive review of the literature regarding identification

and the state, as such a project would be a dissertation in-and-of itself.
Furthermore, the chapter does not delve deeply into the literatures
specific to each subsequent chapter, e.g. those of Holocaust studies,
counterinsurgency doctrine, or studies of India, leaving this work instead
to the respective subsequent chapters. Instead, this chapter articulates the
relationship between bureaucratic forms of governance, surveillance,
identification, and the materiality of the body.
Chapter III examines the use of tattooing in the AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camp, and the way this was an anachronistic use
of identification technology. By first constructing a genealogy of the use
of tattoos in state identification practices, this chapter shows that tattoos
were a technology of writing identity when both the epistemology and
technology of identification at the time (and continuing until now) were
invested in reading identity. Delving into the actual use of the tattoo in
the camp through survivor accounts and archival research, I show that the
tattoo was necessitated as a means to materialize a basic relationship
between the camp administrators and the prisoners because even in a
death camp the maintenance of life on an individual basis requires
identification. The instability of psychological, biographical, or
physiological continuity of the prisoners meant that numerical identity of

20

the individual had to be placed in what is assumed to be the material

stability of the body, even though the conditions of the camp actively
undermined even this foundation. The overwhelming control of the
prisoners, rather than making identification superfluous, actually made
any possible slippage a greater concern, further necessitating the
implementation of stable identification through the tattoo. I argue that
one of the primary lessons of the tattoo is that while official identification
can number or mark an individual, it only becomes a name, i.e. a
psychologically and socially significant identity, when the relationship
that is mediated by the identification eclipses other identities, which in
most circumstances are heterogeneous and multiple. This chapter further
posits that identification is a floating signifier, and that the permanence
of the tattoo in no way influenced the meaning or use either in the camp
or as a symbol after liberation. I end this chapter with a discussion of
Giorgio Agambens metaphorical use of the Auschwitz-Birkenau tattoo to
discuss biometric technologies and how, while politically compelling, his
argument misstates and misunderstands the connection between the two
forms of identification.
In Chapter IV, I study the use of biometrics by the U.S. military in
the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Here, I show that the development
and deployment of biometric technologies was not due to any kind of

21

obvious need or inevitability, but rather because of the ascension of

pentagon officials who were strong proponents of the technology that
accompanied a shift in strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan from air strikes
and the use of special forces to full-blown counterinsurgency tactics. The
doctrine of counterinsurgency is particularly important to the way in
which these technologies were utilized, as its strategic goals are the
separation of the populace from the insurgents and the use of the tools of
governance as tactics of war. In other words, like the tattoo in Auschwitz,
biometrics are a means of managing life. As a tool of counterinsurgency,
biometrics have enabled the centralization and longevity of localized
knowledge despite the limited deployments of U.S. troops. These
technologies have not, however, cleared up the fog of battle or made the
population truly transparent. While the promise of identification has been
to separate the blue forces (i.e. good guys) from the red forces (i.e.
bad guys), the majority of the population remained gray, unknown
and unknowable. As such, far from making the relationship between U.S.
soldiers and Iraqis or Afghanistanis clear and thus one of mutual
understanding and support, each interaction remains one of distrust and
suspicion. Biometrics become a means of legitimizing difficult field
decisions while failing to clarify whether these decisions are correct. In
other words, biometrics technology works in military applications, but

22

not in any way to achieve their purported goals. Ultimately, they are a
symbol of the limits of U.S. military power instead of technological
superiority.
Chapter V turns to Indias Unique ID (UID) and National
Population Register (NPR) programs. These two competing but
interwoven programs goal is to biometrically register all 1.2 billion of
Indias residents. Unlike in the previous chapters, the motivation behind
this (particularly for the UID) is to assist poor and marginalized
communities, given that many of these individuals possess no forms of
identity documentation and as such face hurdles and burdens when
attempting to gain access to public goods, services, and rights. After
placing the two programs in historical context and describing their
particulars, I evaluate the potential of biometrics to actually deliver the
financial and social inclusion promised, focusing primarily on the UID. I
argue that the way in which the UIDs structure focused on fraud
eradication and a neoliberal model of development, means that it is more
likely that the program will become another hurdle of ambiguity and
arbitrary exercise of power for the poor than a means of empowerment.
This is primarily due to the impossibility of totality of the identification
program, such that there will always be individuals who remain outside
for physical, cultural, or antagonistic reasons, and who are exceptions.

23

The procedures put in place to manage exceptions include these

individuals as being simultaneously internal and external, thereby
always/already creating room for doubt and fraud. The relationship that
is mediated by the biometric systems thus remains one of suspicion,
wherein biometrics mask the workings of the state while demanding
transparency and stability of the subjects, rather than one of endowing
citizens with the tools to demand resources and support from their
government.
In the final chapter, I conclude with some thoughts on the spread
and seeming inevitability of identification systems globally, and identify
some points of resistance. I also briefly discuss how this dissertation
might fit into a larger research agenda, along with possible future sites
and subjects of study.

24

CHAPTER II
MEASURED LIVES:
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer
than You.
-Dr. Seuss19
The question what have you done? has now been replaced with who are you?
-Michel Foucault20

Process-ing
When the 2003 Standard Operating Procedures for the Camp Delta
prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were leaked to the non-profit
transparency group Wikileaks in 2007, the regulation of camp procedures
became public.21 In the section entitled Detainee Processing, which
describes the steps taken after a detainee is flown to the camp, U.S.
personnel are instructed to extract, document, and file the following: a
DNA sample taken with a saliva swab, height and weight measurements,
pictures of scars and/or tattoos, prints of all 10 fingers, and five
19

Seuss, Happy Birthday to You! , Party ed., 1 vols. (New York: Random House).
Michel Foucault, Michel Senellart, and College de France., The Birth of Biopolitics :
Lectures at the ColleGe De France, 1978-79 (Basingstoke England ; New York: Palgrave
Macmillan), 34.
21
Geoffery D. Miller, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," ed. Department of Defense
(Wikileaks.org, 2003), 5.4, 6.4, 28.2.
20

25

photographs taken from set angles.22 This process can last upwards of
three hours per detainee, requiring at least two military police officers to
escort the detainee, an interpreter, a physicians assistant, and personnel
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Naval Criminal
Investigation Service, as well as several Detainee Reporting Service
clerks.23 It is important to note that this did not occur in the field of battle,
or when the detainee was being released and potentially capable of future
crimes, but rather at the beginning of their indefinite detention. This
included Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time
of his capture in 2002 and was transferred to a Canadian prison in
September, 2012 after accepting a plea agreement.24 There are still 166
prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, with no known release date yet set.25
I wanted to highlight the intake procedures at Guantanamo Bay not
to make a normative point, but rather to showcase the absurdity of
identification practices given the circumstances. Control over these
individuals bodies, their movement, and even their future was not really
in question, that authority was held in near totality by the U.S. officers.
And yet three hours worth of documentation was required to establish, or

22

"Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," ed. Department of Defense (Wikileaks.org,

2003), 4.1-4.2.
23
Ibid.
24
Anna Mehler Paperny, "Khadr 'Relieved' as Return to Canada Puts His Fate in Prison System's
Hands," The Globe and Mail, September 29th.
25
Eli Lake, "The Unending Gitmo Nightmare," The Daily Beast, February 13th.

26

rather (af)fix, the individuals identity, even for a child. This was not done
through questioning or interrogation, but through a close inventory of the
prisoners body. There is more going on here than simply a rite of
passage,26 it is instead indicative of deep-set epistemic drives and
anxieties particular to modern, bureaucratic governance. It is the
identification programs that stem from drives and anxieties, and their
effect on the subjects they would catalog or overlook, that this dissertation
will study.
In this chapter, I sketch out the theoretical framework of my
dissertation, and highlight the literature that I am building on and am in
dialogue with. The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first
section, I describe the imperatives of certain forms of bureaucratic
governance that drive increased surveillance, specifically the role of what
I call bureaucratic fantasies of universal identification. I then discuss
the issues of materiality and the role of bodies in programs of
identification, and the way in which the instability of the material
confounds and complicates government policies. I also discuss the
particular theoretical points regarding biometric technologies. In the third
and final section, I briefly discuss the way in which identification creates a

26

Erving Goffman, Asylums; Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates,
[1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y.,: Anchor Books).

27

means by which to mediate the relationship between the individual and

the state, even when such a relationship does not formally exist.

Bureaucracy and Surveillance

While my dissertation is on practices of the state, it is necessary to
point out that the state is a social imaginary that is politically
constructed and deployed, even by those theorists who take a critical
stance.27 To re-phrase Mitt Romneys politically unfortunate statement
about corporations (or maybe Charlton Heston about Soylent Green?),
states are people. And in modern statecraft, many of the people who
continually reconstitute and recreate the state on a day-to-day basis are
bureaucrats. As this dissertation tells stories about the relationship
between individuals and the state, it is important to look at the
individuals who constitute the state side of this relationship and how their
roles have shaped the technologies through which they interact with the
public. My approach follows the work of Ben Kafka on the rise of
paperwork and its problems in the French Revolution,28 Michael Herzfeld
on the way in which the inefficiencies of bureaucracy are used as excuses

Benedict R. O'G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, Rev. ed. (London ; New York ;: Verso).
28 Ben Kafka, The Demon of Writing : Powers and Failures of Paperwork (New York: Zone
Books).
27

28

for inaction by both citizens and bureaucrats,29 and Michael Hull on the
central role of paperwork in constituting the state in Pakistan.30
According to Hannah Arendt, the political form known as
bureaucracy is the rule by Nobody.31 In other words, bureaucratic
governance is the systemization and standardization of the practices of
government. It is the reification of rules and regulations into forms,
paperwork, and protocols such that those who implement and execute the
day-to-day maintenance of state power are rendered mere conduits for the
institutionalized force of forms; they are Nobodies. The heroes and
villains of bureaucratic tales are those who break free of the forms through
acts of defiance or corruption.32
This hollowing-out of power from active individuals to
institutions and forms occurs not only at the level of the lowly clerk and
pencil pusher, but all the way up to the heads of state. Michel Foucault
describes these individuals as the ubu-esque a discourse or individual
can have effects of power that their intrinsic qualities should disqualify
them from having which has been [s]ince the nineteenth century, an

Michael Herzfeld, The Social Production of Indifference : Exploring the Symbolic Roots of
Western Bureaucracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
30 Matthew S. Hull, Government of Paper : The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan
(Berkeley: University of California Press).
31 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil, Rev. and enl.
ed., Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics (New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books), 289.
32 See, for instance, Ben Kafka, "The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the
Reign of Terror," Representations 98, no. Spring.
29

29

essential feature of big Western Bureaucracies. Its power works by

using the mediocre, useless, imbecilic, superficial, ridiculous, worn-out,
poor, and powerless.33 Rather than weakening the power of bureaucratic
governance, its inevitability is reinforced, for it can function in its full
rigor and at the extreme point of its rationality even when in the hands of
someone who is effectively discredited.34
Governance (particularly mass, bureaucratic forms of governance)
requires a simplification of the messiness of reality into manageable
abstractions. To use James C. Scotts terminology, it is necessary for the
rationalized purposes of the state to transform the social hieroglyph, i.e.
the complexity of reality, into a legible and administratively more
convenient format.35 This occurs through the rounding off of
difference and ignoring divergences from the norm in order to maintain
the integrity of the system. It also involves the active interference of
governing coalitions, forcing reality to more closely resemble the
abstraction. Michel Foucault describes this trend as the governance of
populations- the gathering, tabulation and analysis of demographic data
upon which government action is then taken. Governing populations (as

Michel Foucault et al., Abnormal : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1974-1975, 1st Picador
USA ed. (New York: Picador), 11.
34 Abnormal : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1974-1975, 1st Picador USA ed. (New York:
Picador), 12.
35 Scott, Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed, 3.
33

30

opposed to land in feudal times) involves the management of the health

and well-being of the populace, in the intimate day-to-day functions of life
itself.36 Modern politics, according to Foucault and since expanded on by
such authors as Nicholas Rose and Paul Rabinow, is thus overwhelmingly
dominated by what he called biopolitics.37 Importantly, the shift to
biopolitics and the governance of the populace meant a focus on the wellbeing of the individual, which necessitated what Foucault has famously
described as discipline, and which Giles Deluze has argued is now turning
into regimes of control.38
During the 18th century (which coincides with the rise of biopolitics
as the focus of the state), changes in understandings of biology and
perception changed the relationship between a persons body and the
observer. Individuals bodies were made to speak to the trained expert
whereas before they were silent, or rather found expression only through
the individuals voice. Sterne points to the illustrative case in which
doctors ceased to listen to the patients description of their ailments, and

Michel Foucault, Michel Senellart, and Arnold Ira Davidson, Security, Territory,
Population : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1977-1978 (Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
37 See: Michel Foucault et al., Society Must Be Defended : Lectures at the Collge De France,
1975-76, 1st Picador pbk. ed. (New York: Picador); Paul Rabinow, Marking Time : On the
Anthropology of the Contemporary (Princeton: Princeton University Press); James N.
Rosenau and J. P. Singh, Information Technologies and Global Politics : The Changing Scope of
Power and Governance, Suny Series in Global Politics (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press).
38 Negotiations, 1972-1990.
36

31

with the help of the stethoscope (now a near-universal symbol of the

profession) began to listen to the patients bodies directly.39 It is no
coincidence that soon thereafter criminologists such as Caesar Lombroso
began to read criminality in the sugar loaf skull shapes, pointy heads,
heavy jaws, receding brows, and scanty beards of so-called born
criminals,40 nor that police officials identified recidivists through the use
of Bertillonage, which applied anthropological tools of measurement
and standardized language to scientifically describe the appearance of
repeat offenders.41 Prior to Bertillonage, the identification of criminalseither in wanted circulars, the precursors to wanted signs, or in the
tracking of recidivists- consisted of names and basic descriptions of the

Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past : Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham:
Duke University Press), 99-117.
40 Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 24. These
physical traits were said to be accompanied by the distinctive behavioral patterns of
laziness, frivolity, and moral insensibility as well as a fondness for tattoos and a high
tolerance to pain. Despite their best efforts, neither Lombroso nor his followers were able
to find a foolproof indicator of criminality. See: Nicole Hahn Rafter, "Criminal
Anthropology: Its Reception in the United States and the Nature of Its Appeal," in
Criminals and Their Scientists : The History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed.
Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell (New York: Cambridge University Press; German
Historical Institute), 168; David G. Horn, "Making Criminologists: Tools, Techniques and
the Production of Scientific Authority," in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of
Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell (New
York: Cambridge University Press), 322-33.
41 Bertillonage is named after the French police clerk Alphonse Bertillon, who devised a
complex categorization system to be used in the registering and identification of
criminals that utilized the Anthropometric measuring tools common in Anthropology
and Eugenics as well as a standard language of description. Peter Becker, "The
Standardized Gaze: The Standardization of the Search Warrant in the NineteenthCentury Germany," in Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in
the Modern World, ed. Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 145-48.
39

32

individual, often focusing on clothing.42 The individual was understood

as an organic whole, one that contained easily malleable identifiers such
as names or clothes. It was only with the objectification and division of
the body and the sensory data it produced that modern identification
became possible.43
These changes in conceptualizing perception had just as important
an impact on the role of the individuals conducting surveillance.
Although perception was disassociated from the observer into mechanical
processes through theoretical and technological advances, prior to their
actual mechanization within surveillance regimes this development
translated into the creation of hierarchies of attention. In other words,
certain individuals became mere perceptual apparatuses utilized by others
to gather observable data on which to conduct analysis. A readily
apparent instance of this transformation is in the mechanization of police
42Valentin

Groebner, Who Are You? : Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early

Modern Europe (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books), 80-81.
43 Juliet Fleming argues, when discussing Renaissance tattoos, that [n]ames cause
identity retroactively; within a culture that does not resist this fact they may, after all,
divine the truth of what they label, and that [t]he suggestion that identity is
constituted, not in the depths, but at the outer surface of the subject, is experienced by the
Cartesian cogito as a type of claustrophobia: nominor ergo sum like other names, it
wounds by threatening to reduce the subject to a function of itself . Juliet Fleming, "The
Renaissance Tattoo," in Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History,
ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press), 63,82.. Valentin Groebner
argued that in pre and early modern Europe, [c]lothing, an expensive item among
anyones personal valuables, appears in this context of observation to be a part of the
person, a distinguishing characteristic in the literal sense of the term. Valentin
Groebner, "Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Reaissance
Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Figures, and the Limits of Identification, 1400-1600," in
Documenting Individual Identity : The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, ed.
Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 24.

33

observation under Bertillonage, wherein the inherent flaws of the

subjective police clerk were standardized and controlled.44 Similarly, at
the turn of the 19th century the role of beat cops was transformed from
one of independent surveillance and action into a repetitive routine of
taking notes and making reports to detectives, whose higher facilities
supposedly enabled proper analysis.45 Police officers were the eyes and
ears of the detective, whose primary imperative was the clear and
concise transmission of sensory information.
This trend in labor management of dividing mechanical processes
from independent action and thought is hardly limited to the police, but is
rather quite wide-spread under the title of scientific management, most
famously articulated by Frederick Taylor. Taylor argued that scientists
should be deployed to observe labor processes (such as carrying pig-iron)
in order to determine the most efficient means of achieving a task, and
then instructing the laborer in the minutiae of their work. As summarized
by Harry Bravermen, these scientists gather and concentrate all
Underscoring the importance of standardized descriptive language were the charts
created by Bertillon for reference by police clerks with pictures of various body parts to
be described, for example different ear shapes. Once Bertillonage gained popularity both
in France and internationally, Bertillon struggled desperately (and futilely) to maintain
strict adherence to his methods and language- even in the Paris office where Bertillon
enforced firm discipline variations in measurement and description plagued
identification efforts. See: Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal
Identification, 71-72, 147-53.
45 Peter Becker, "Objective Distance and Intimate Knowledge: On the Structure of
Criminalistic Obsrervation and Description," in Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays
on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, ed. Peter Becker and William Clark (Ann Arbor,
Mich.: University of Michigan Press), 210-11.
44

34

knowledge of the productive process in the hands of management, which

then uses this monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labor process
and its mode of execution (emphasis original).46 Interestingly, the labor that
is observed and analyzed in regimes of surveillance is that of observation
and analysis.
As is readily apparent to anyone living under the shadow of closed
circuit televisions (CCTV) in London or Manhattan, the conceptualization
of perception as a mechanized process can and does lead to the actual
mechanization of observation. The need for, and more importantly the
lamentable inadequacy of local clerks and sergeants to carry out the duties
of attention are a driving factor that has advanced surveillance
technologies since the invention of the modern passport system in
revolutionary France to state-of-the-art biometric processing algorithms
employed today.47 As shown in Sid Harrings 1981 study of the
Harry Braverman, "The Real Meaning of Taylorism," in Critical Studies in Organization
and Bureaucracy, ed. Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press), 84.
47 On March 17th, 1792 Francois de Neufchateau disparaged the attempts to institute a
passport system stating that I ask you whether there are not entire departments in
which the officials of the rural municipalities- so respected and worthy of the publics
confidence as they are- are not even able to write. Those who have learned to form their
letters have so little experience in writing that for the most part they are embarrassed to
pen a simple missive; their ideas about this kind of work are so limited that they fear to
have misunderstood the rules that prescribe their duties; on the other hand their own
daily occupations leave them so little free time and their municipal duties take up so
much of it for other purposes that they perform most of their functions late or not at all,
and always badly. Gerard Noiriel, "The Identification of the Citizen: The Birth of
Republican Civil Status in France," in Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of
State Practices in the Modern World, ed. Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 30-31. Much of the growing controversy regarding
46

35

Taylorization of the American police force, the independent labor of the

patrol officer has been centralized, deskilled, and ultimately automated
such that the role of the officer is now of rapid response to mechanized
alerts rather than routinized surveillance and action.48 Even the vaunted
role of the detective is not safe from this process, as their work had at the
time of the study become specialized into types of cases and detached
from geographical grounding.49 Thus, observation is conceptually
detached from analysis, and both are removed from the specific
individual.
These processes, understood as such, are then automated and while
individuals do not disappear from these regimes, they are relegated to
positions of data transfer, often between machines. For example, the
border guard who takes an individuals photograph and fingerprints, and
then inputs this information into a computer to be checked against a
centralized database is facilitating communication between the camera
and the computer. The guards ideal role in modern systems of

the use of fingerprints in trials is due to the fact that automated searches do not, contra
CSI, produce exact matches but rather a number of possibilities that must be viewed and
analyzed by a human technician. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Identification, 261.
48 Sid Harring, "The Taylorization of Police Work," in Critical Studies in Organization and
Bureaucracy, ed. Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press), 163-65.
49 "The Taylorization of Police Work," in Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy,
ed. Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 165.

36

surveillance is neither of observer nor analyst, but rather that of an

impartial conduit: replicable, replaceable, and empty.
Yet in truth machines break down, give false output, and require
attention. The technologies of surveillance are put in place due to the
inadequacies of all-too-human officials, but the constant possibility of
technical failure requires the constant need for the re-introduction of
arbitrary human intervention. While I go into some detail of the possible
fallibility of various identification technologies in fulfilling their
designated tasks in the following chapters, it is not necessary to argue
relative efficiency to make this point. Even in systems of overwhelming
accuracy, full and final proof of a positive identification, i.e. that you are
the same person you were when enrolled- is based on probability and
cannot be proven with absolute certainty. In the final analysis, you are not
who you were five minutes ago, not exactly. Further, there will always be
those who for some reason or other cannot or refuse to be enrolled in a
system, and those who will attempt to defraud it. Particular policies of
governance may help to combat the former, and better technologies will
help to combat the latter, but neither of these projects will ever be
complete, if for no other reason than that it benefits the state itself to allow

37

for the possibility of backdoors and false identities.50 In short,

identification policies are put in place to remove human error and to grasp
individuals who are fraudulent or outside the current reach of the state,
but the fact that every system is susceptible to fraud and cannot grasp
individuals outside its reach means that error-prone human intervention
will always be necessitated.
Scholars of bureaucracy and their relationship with marginalized
communities have helped make clear the fundamental arbitrariness of
bureaucratic rule and its effects.51 The creation of thresholds and
categories upon which the largess of the state is doled out means that
individuals dependent upon these subsidies are in a constant state of
uncertainty and liminality. Positions of poverty or bodily harm become a
form of social capital that must be documented, displayed and preformed,
yet are never final guarantees of support; changes in rules, suspicion of
fraud, and disruptions in process can all invalidate legitimate claims. As
Akhil Gupta points out, this is not due to the personal feelings of the
individual bureaucrats who are often quite sympathetic to the plight of
Jeff Stein, "Cia's Secret Fear: High Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies' Cover," Wired
Danger Room, April 12.
51 Page DuBois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge); Miriam Ticktin, "Where Ethics
and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France," American Ethnologist 33,
no. 1; Akhil Gupta, Red Tape : Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India, A John
Hope Franklin Center Book (Durham: Duke University Press); Nigel Parton, "Risk,
Advanced Liberalism and Child Welfare: The Need to Rediscover Uncertainty and
Ambiguity," British Journal of Social Work 28, no. 1; Adriana Petryna, Life Exposed :
Biological Citizens after Chernobyl, In-Formation Series (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press).
50

38

those they are assigned to help, but simply because decisions must be
made and the way in which to arbitrate these decisions is rarely clear. The
hollowing out and Taylorization of bureaucratic decision-making is
essentially an attempt to grapple with this very problem, outsourcing
choice to the techne of paperwork and regulations. The computerization
and automation of these processes is merely an extension of this, with
power and social norms being coded into algorithms and protocols.52 In
order to maintain the integrity of these processes, i.e. to prevent people
from gaming the system, the internal workings must remain opaque,
and the outcome of each interaction uncertain. And standing at each
point of uncertainty is the Nobody who is held accountable not to realworld outcomes but rather to internal logics and legitimizations, statistics
and metrics.53
This dynamic becomes more acute as the points of contact between
citizens and the state expand in number and in intensity. A growing body
of literature in Surveillance Studies documents the growing ubiquity of
surveillance tactics and technologies, particularly in the past decade.54

Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit : A Theory of Networks,

Electronic Mediations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
53 Which, it must be noted, is made transparent and accountable by the same technologies
of surveillance. Who watches the watchers? Elephants looking at screens in front of
cameras, all the way down. See: Gary T. Marx, Undercover : Police Surveillance in America
(Berkeley: University of California Press), 224.
54 David Lyon, Theorizing Surveillance : The Panopticon and Beyond (Cullompton, Devon:
Willan Publishing); Identifying Citizens : Id Cards as Surveillance (Cambridge ; Malden,
52

39

David Lyon, who is at the forefront of this wave of scholarship, argues

that we are moving towards a surveillance society that is driven both by
developments in the public sector and the private sector.55 Building off of
Deulze and Gutarris work, Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson helpfully
describe the various agencies and technologies as surveillant
assemblages, which acknowledges the multiplicity and flexibility of
surveillance programs that are often only loosely coordinated and at times
internally contradictory.56 While this is often tied to the so-called
securitization of the state,57 surveillance creep is increasingly prevalent in
such diverse aspects of life such as labor management,58 welfare

MA: Polity); Kirstie Ball and Frank Webster, The Intensification of Surveillance : Crime,
Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Age, 1st ed. (London ; Sterling, VA: Pluto Press);
Torin Monahan, Surveillance and Security : Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life
(New York: Routledge); Richard V. Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty, The New Politics of
Surveillance and Visibility, Green College Thematic Lecture Series (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press); Marx, Undercover : Police Surveillance in America; Oscar H. Gandy, The
Panoptic Sort : A Political Economy of Personal Information, Critical Studies in
Communication and in the Cultural Industries (Boulder, Colo.: Westview).
55 David Lyon, The Electronic Eye : The Rise of Surveillance Society (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press).
56 Haggerty, "The Surveillant Assemblage."
57 Richard Victor Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society (Toronto ;
Buffalo: University of Toronto Press); Stephen Graham, Cities, War, and Terrorism :
Towards an Urban Geopolitics, Studies in Urban and Social Change (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing); Armand Mattelart, La Globalisation De La Surveillance : Aux
Origines De L'ordre SeCuritaire, Cahiers Libres (Paris: Decouverte).
58 Priscilla M. Regan, "Genetic Testing and Workplace Surveillance: Implications for
Privacy," in Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy, ed. David Lyon and Elia Zureik
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press); James B. Rule, "High-Tech Workplace
Surveillance: What's Really New," ibid; JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication : The
Rise of System in American Management, Studies in Industry and Society [6] (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press).

40

distribution,59 schools,60 and even parenting.61 And while James Beringer

would argue that there is something particularly special about the current
moment, specifically the rise of information technologies, which are
leading to a control revolution,62 historians such as Edward Higgs and
Valentine Groebner provide a necessary corrective that while technologies
may have changed, the imperative to control through information and
observation is hardly new.63
One argument of how and why the drive for surveillance into all
aspects of life is increasing in intensity and scope is the shift to what
Ulrich Beck calls the risk society.64 Haggerty and Ericson explain the
link between risk and surveillance, stating that:
[The] Risk society is fuelled by surveillance, by the routine
production of knowledge of populations useful for their
administration. Surveillance provides biopower, the power to
make biographical profiles of human populations to determine
John Gilliom, Overseers of the Poor : Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy, The
Chicago Series in Law and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Adrienne S.
Chambon, Allan Irving, and Laura Epstein, Reading Foucault for Social Work (New York:
Columbia University Press).
60 Anna; Lindgren Sparmann, Anne-Li, "Visual Documentation as Normalizing Practice:
A New Discourse of Visibility in Preschool," Surveillance & Society 3/4; Emmeline Taylor,
"Awareness, Understanding and Experiences of Cctv Amongst Teachers and Pupils in
Three Uk Schools," Video Surveillance: Practices and Policies in Europe 18.
61 Angie C; Harmon Henderson, Sandra M; Houser, Jeffrey, "A New State of
Surveillance? An Application of Michel Foucault to Modern Motherhood," Surveillance &
Society 7, no. 3/4.
62 James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution : Technological and Economic Origins of the
Information Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
63 Edward Higgs, The Information State in England : The Central Collection of Information on
Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan);
Groebner, Who Are You? : Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe.
64 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society : Towards a New Modernity, Theory, Culture & Society (London
; Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications).
59

41

what is probable and possible for them. Surveillance fabricates

people around institutionally established norms- risk is always
somewhere on the continuum of imprecise normality
Surveillance bolsters bureaucracy, helping it to form its authority
and govern at a distance.65
In other words, the imprecision of surveillance technologies, their relative
scenarios of risk and probability, bolsters the drive for more surveillance,
and bolsters the perceived need for and power of bureaucratic
governance. As argued by Ian Hacking, the onset of probabilistic thinking
leads to openness to intervention and control, for if events are
indeterminate then all steps must be taken to assure desired outcomes.66
In other words, unlike belief in fate, understandings of probability and
risk mean that action can be taken to mitigate harmful or undesirable
outcomes.
The smaller the possibility of a negative outcome, the less it is seen
as an inevitable cost and more a reducible risk. The recent rise of so-called
Big Data and the spread of financial tools in the management of risk
across sectors is part of the trend identified by Hacking, wherein
probabilistic thinking necessitates the precise tracking and management of
risk.67 As argued by Theodore Porter, the spread of one of the primary

Ericson and Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society, 450.

Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance, Ideas in Context (Cambridge [England] ; New York:
Cambridge University Press).
67 Randy Martin, An Empire of Indifference : American War and the Financial Logic of Risk
Management, Social Text Books (Durham: Duke University Press); Greg Elmer, Profiling
Machines : Mapping the Personal Information Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
65
66

42

tools of risk management, that of cost-benefit analysis, into a universal

standard of rationality, bucked up by thousands of pages of rules, cannot
be attributed to the megalomania of experts, but rather to bureaucratic
conflict in a context of overwhelming public distrust.68 In other words,
risk management is precisely that, managing risk, not managing actual
harm. Rather the bureaucrat could be blamed for such harm occurring.

Identity, Biometrics, and Materiality

On an individual level, the difference between the government
abstraction, called by Roger Clark the digital persona or digital self,
and the psychological self-construction of the individual undergoes a
process of rounding off and interference.69 The divide between the ipseidentity (biographical, psychological) and the idem-identity (numerical,
official), is of pressing concern, and while there have been several
significant attempts to grapple with the relationship between the two
there is still a great deal of ambiguity regarding the actual effects (or lack
thereof) of the idem on the ipse.70 While I will explore this point further in

Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers : The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 72.
69 Roger Clarke, "Biometrics and Privacy,"
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/Biometrics.html. A wonderful art
project poigniently show
70 Terminology taken from Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press). See for a description of various programs set up by the European
Unions Future of Identity in the Information Society Project dealing with the
68

43

Chapter 3, the effect of a numerical identity on identity of the self does not
stem from the act of assignment, but rather from the processes by which
the individual and others alter their interactions as they mediate this
construction. For example, calling yourself King is important only if you
and others alter your relationship because of the name change (either by
crowning you or throwing you into a mental institution). The relative
weight of an idem- identity on an ipse- identity should be measured not by
the technologies used, but rather the relationships that they mediate.
In order to deal with their subjects, bureaucratic agencies construct
both idem and ipse identities for their subjects due to the inevitable
outgrowth of contradictory but deeply structural drives inherent to
bureaucratic governance. The impetus of modern identification
technologies is based on structural desires for subjects that are both
perfectly predictable and perfectly traceable. Yet, the object of these
desires is unobtainable. Not only is reality inevitably too messy for state
abstraction, the desire for technologies that predict and those that trace
often work at cross-purposes in implementation. Therefore I call these
drives for technological means to perfectly trace and predict subjects
forms of bureaucratic fantasies, for while their realization is practically

relationship between idem and ipse identification: Kai; Royer Rannenberg, Denis; Deuker,
Andre, ed. The Future of Idenitity in the Information Society: Challenges and Opportunities, 1
ed. (Berlin: Springer-Verlag).

44

impossible, their pursuit underlies actual policies, technological

developments, and even the formations of resistance. I want to emphasize
the use of the word fantasy as opposed to ideal. Unlike an ideal,
which is known to be unachievable and is rather set forward as something
to strive for, fantasies contain a fantastic element that requires a degree of
faith to accept, and this leap of faith then allows for the actual acceptance
of the project as wholly achievable.
The tensions between the two bureaucratic fantasies of the perfectly
traceable subject and the perfectly predictable subject bear explanation. In
order for the state to accurately identify an individual over time and
through their various points of contact with the state, both in records and
real-time interaction, the ideal token of identity is an empty signifier that
anchors and binds together the various strands of an idem-identity. The
most pertinent example of this type of identifier is fingerprints, which inand-of themselves hold no biographical information (although Francis
Galton did at one point hope that they would reveal ancestry),71 but
instead are used to connect an individuals body to pertinent records and,
through latent fingerprinting techniques, even locations that the person
once passed through. To use Derek Parfits terminology, this form of
identity must be both numerical (a 1:1 relationship between persons) and

71

Quoted in Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification.

45

diachronic (the 1:1 relationship persists over time).72 The second fantasy
focuses not on the enduring individual over time and space, but rather the
degree to which an individual fits a particular pattern of behavior in a
given moment and/or place. While this form of identification can be
understood as existing under the umbrella of profiling technologies, an
important distinction needs to be made. While profiles of individuals are
often crafted over time using numerical diachronic identification, many
current biometric technologies are being developed to capture a set of
behaviors, movements or bodily traits regardless of the persons past or
future actions/behaviors. An example of this is facial detection
technology that is programmed to alert security officials if the subject is
nervous or afraid (and thus attempting to hide some kind of threat or
subterfuge). Parfit would call this form of identification qualitative; as
the subject is identified by the qualities they share with others rather than
their unique sameness to themselves.73
While confluences between these two forms of identification exist,
as mentioned earlier, qualitative identities can be built over time through
the use of numerical identification, and the empty signifier of a fingerprint
is given meaning through its attachment to categorized information built
into profiles. In practice it is becoming increasingly clear that an easy
72
73

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 3rd ed. (New York City: Oxford University Press).
Ibid.

46

distinction between these forms of identification is quite difficult,

exemplified by Paul Ohms statement that Data can either be useful or
perfectly anonymous but never both.74 In other words, current data
mining techniques make it possible if not easy to take the information
used to create a profile and reconstruct a numerical identity. Likewise, the
stickiness of identification schema makes the emptiness of a numerical
identity immediately suspect. For example, although a social security
number is supposedly arbitrary in its assignment and limited in its
purpose, researchers have been able to read information such as date
and geographic region of birth into the numbers. This is problematic
inasmuch as any attempts to implement either of these types of
technologies run afoul of privacy concerns if they are perceived as doing
the work of the other.75 DNA is a perfect example of this tension.
Programs designed to use DNA fragments for numerical identification
must eschew the possibility that these fragments will be read for
categories such as race or disease, and likewise DNA that is used to search

Paul Ohm, "Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of

Anonymization."
75
This is, of course, a very simplistic understanding of privacy, but one that seems to be
firmly held by the industry. For better legal and social analysis of the privacy
implications of identification technologies, see: Laura K. Donohue, "Technological Leap,
Statutory Gap, and Constitutional Abyss: Remote Biometric Identification Comes of
Age," Minnesota Law Review 97.
74

47

for patterns of heritable traits must take pains to scrub numerically

identifying information from the results.76
This is an important theoretical point, as the desire for predictable,
categorizable subjects is often conflated with the fantasy of universal,
numerical identification, both by proponents and detractors of
identification technologies. Despite the above mentioned ability to extract
the idem from the ipse and vice-versa, numerical identity simply does not
grant immediate insight into the motivations, thoughts or future actions of
an individual. This limits the utility of identification programs in tasks
such as telling the good guys from the bad guys (see Chapter IV) or
the deserving from the undeserving poor (see Chapter V).
Interestingly, those who actually work with technologies of identification
are often acutely aware of their fallibility and limits, and this enables them
to interject flexibility (and ambiguity) back into ostensibly perfectible
systems. As argued by Donald A. Mackenzie, facts are hardest not for

I should note that it was only recently that DNA has been considered an actual
biometric, as the time that it takes to process the samples was too long for it to be
considered real-time, automated identification. For this reason, and also because the
programs that I studied made little use of DNA technology (at least during the period of
time that I studied them), I did not be spend much time on DNA and the particularities
of its collection and use. See, for studies of the subject: Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Biocapital :
The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (Durham: Duke University Press); Eugene Thacker,
The Global Genome : Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, Leonardo (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press); Allan D. Cooper, "Reparations for the Herero Genocide: Defining the Limits of
International Litigation," African Affairs 106, no. 422; Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics
(New York: Routledge); Michael Lynch, Truth Machine : The Contentious History of DNA
Fingerprinting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
76

48

insiders but for program loyalists and trusting readers removed from
production of technical fact (and, I would argue, program critics).77
While advances in technologies such as location tracking and Big
Data may make profiles so powerful that idem-identities loose
importance in concerns over privacy and discrimination (i.e. your name is
irrelevant to the negative effects of surveillance, as your patterns of
behavior and location are enough to grasp you), for the foreseeable future
the creation of numerical identity will remain an important bureaucratic
tool for tracing individuals across time, space and contexts. Due to
constraints of time and necessary winnowing of scope, this dissertation
primarily focuses on technologies of idem-identification, of which
biometrics are the techne par-excellance.78
The rise of biometrics as a government tool and an industry in its
own right has led to its similar rise as an object of academic study. Of
particular note is the work of Simon Cole on fingerprinting,79 Kelly Gates

Donald A. Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy : An Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile

Guidance, Inside Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).
78 Biometrics are often confused to also encompass a field of technologies that use
physiological or behavioral characteristics to divine intent (such as lie detectors, or malintent detection), which are essentially instant-profiling machines, not biometrics (see, for
example of such confusion, Juliet Lodge, "Transformative Biometrics and the Exercise of
Arbitrary Power," BIOSIG 191.. Similarly, soft biometrics that attempt to detect gender,
race or age are biometrics only inasmuch as these traits are used to determine numerical
identity, often as a secondary check on hard biometrics or other forms of ID. Biometrics
professionals both in the industry and government agencies are quite ardent about the
separation between these technologies, both in order to set disciplinary boundaries, andI suspect more importantly- to maintain a semblance of privacy protection in design.
79 Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification.
77

49

on facial recognition technology,80 Keith Breckenridge on the biometric

systems of South Africa,81 Irma van der Ploeg on early European biometric
programs of identification,82 and Shoshana Amielle Magnet with a
feminist critique of biometric technologies, writ large.83 David Lyon and
David Barnard-Wills have also made significant contributions to the study
of biometric technologies, although their subject matter is identification
practices more so than just the use of bodies.84 Joseph Pugliese and
Benjamin Mller have both written thoroughly researched manuscripts on
the subject of biometrics, but tend to take an overly superficial view of the
technology and its implications, taking a simplistic read of Foucaults
work and applying it to the always/already negative exploitation of the
body by the state.85 While most of these authors concentrate on the ways
in which biometrics fail (particularly Magnet, Cole, and Pugliese), there is
little discussion of how this failure is productive, i.e. what work biometrics
actually does even when it does not work as intended. My dissertation
addresses this important gap.

Gates, Our Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance.
Breckenridge, "Verwoerd's Bureau of Proof: Total Information in the Making of
Apartheid," History Workshop Journal, no. 59.
82 Irma Van der Ploeg, The Machine-Readable Body (Maastricht: Shaker).
83 Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity.
84 Lyon, Identifying Citizens : Id Cards as Surveillance; David Barnard-Wills, Surveillance and
Identity : Discourse, Subjectivity and the State (Farnham ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate).
85 Joseph Pugliese, Biometrics : Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics, Routledge Studies in
Science, Technology, and Society (New York: Routledge); Benjamin Mller, Security, Risk
and the Biometric State : Governing Borders and Bodies, Prio New Security Studies (London ;
New York: Routledge).
80
81

50

Biometric technologies take on a particularly interesting role in the

Quixote-esque quest to realize the fantasy of the perfectly traceable and
predictable subject. There is an epistemological weighting of information
that is retrieved from an individuals body as having greater truth-value.
This statement is further complicated when considering how the drive for
technologies of truth based in extracting information from bodies is
deeply linked to shifts in information technologies. Further, the greater
the digitization and de-materialization of communication enabled by
these shifts are, the greater the longing for materiality with its supposed
permanence and immutability, becomes. Implicit in this argument is the
understanding that bodies are not only mediated by technologies of
governance, but are media themselves- or rather, actants in mediatic
systems. In short, bodies are prized components of the states information
assemblages due to their materiality, yet the stability imbued in bodies
materiality is itself a conditional and problematic construction of historic
power relations.86
These observations are highly germane to the discussion of
identification technologies, for the epistemological underpinnings
continue to inform discourses of truth production, albeit in a somewhat
86

The construction of what a body is and is not is itself a contestable concept, as long argued by
Judith Butler, but also now by areas of scientific study such as immunology. Judith Butler, Gender
Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge); Thomas Pradeu, The
Limits of the Self : Immunology and Biological Identity (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University
Press).

51

altered state. It is commonly accepted that one cannot consciously control

all aspects of ones bodily existence. We are, to quote David Lyon, leaky
containers of information, constantly secreting, smudging, vibrating, and
otherwise leaving wakes and traces.87 As suggested by Paige duBoiss
work on the epistemological underpinnings of torture in ancient Greece
and because we have no control over these leaks, they are much more
truthful than information that we consciously impart;88 the less control we
have, the more veracious the leaked information. Identification
technologies, particularly those used for profiling tasks, are built around
the understanding that while people may obfuscate and lie, their
uncontrolled leaks and traces can do nothing but be truthful. In the
current context, individuals may give false information without knowing
this information is false, but the information left by bodies is unaffected by
the presence or lack of understanding.
Automated or not, the processes of extraction and analysis of data
is more an act of creation than it is of simple observation. This is hardly a
novel assertion. Perhaps the definitive distillation is Martin Heideggers
argument that the nature of technology is enframing rather than bring-

87
88

Lyon, Theorizing Surveillance : The Panopticon and Beyond.

DuBois, Torture and Truth.

52

forth.89 Put simply (and in the context of the current discussion)

identification technologies do not reveal hidden truths (i.e. naturally
existing identities), but rather actively create, define, and limit identities.
The term biometrics somewhat explicitly acknowledges this, for it refers
both to the technologies that measure and the trace that is measured.
There is no separating process from product, as the product does not exist
outside of the process. Furthermore, biometric systems enframe biometric
traces as possessing materiality, even when these traces are digitized and
encoded. In being linked to (leaked from) a persons body, the traces are
granted an aura of material immediacy that eclipses the enframing
technologies. Your fingerprint is not a set of patterns superimposed on an
ink smudge that are then transformed into a numerical sequence
according to this epistemological framework; your fingerprint is
inescapably You.
After spending the majority of his book, Speaking Into the Air,
extrapolating on the impossibility of perfect communication and the evils
wrought by those who desired it, John Durham Peters devotes his last
chapter to a longing for physical immediacy. He states that [t]o view
communication as the marriage of true minds underestimates the holiness
of the body Being there still matters, even in an age of full-body
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, 1st ed., Harper
Colophon Books Cn 419 (New York: Harper & Row).
89

53

simulations.90 Peters is not alone in his desire for the holiness of

being there in the face of the ethereal simulations; the state feels his
pain. Materiality is for the state both problem and solution. In its
attempts to become streamlined, efficient, and e- (e-government, ecommerce, etc.) the material intransigence of dust build-up in servers,
carpal tunnel in users, and the ironic build-up of paperwork in the
paperless office continues to frustrate and confound. In its quest after the
fantasies of the perfectly traceable and the perfectly predictable subject,
the state sees in bodily materiality a permanent anchor and a well-spring
of information incorruptible by deceit or ignorance. This desire becomes
more acute as activities go online and threats become cyber (Ryan
Singel of Wired Magazine posits that the degree to which a document
hopes to scare its audience can be measured by how many times the word
cyber appears in it).91
The bodys material stability is, however, an epistemological
construction. The relationship between logos and bios is hardly
straightforward. The body and its leaks can be controlled or stymied in
myriad ways, and often the evidence left by an individuals body can be
misleading in spite of the individuals conscious will. Rare conditions like
John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 270.
91 Ryan Singel, "Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet," Threat Level
Blog.
90

54

the Chimera syndrome (in which an individual has organs with DNA
from an unborn fraternal twin that does not match their own) or physical
laborers whose fingerprints have been worn away with time belie the
universal reach of biometric technologies.92 It is also impossible to escape
the problems of representation and mediation. While the enframed
materiality may hide the processes of identification, the hiccups,
misinterpretations, and corrupted data continually return these issues to
the surface.
The word biometrics has a few different definitions: the term,
initially it referred solely to the measurement of body parts for medical
purposes. Today, it also describes a constellation of technologies that
automate identification based on physiological and behavioral
characteristics, and also applies to the characteristics that are measured.
While biometrics in its original sense is still used both in practice and in
parlance, this definition bears little on conversations regarding
identification.93 That the term is used for both the technologies and
targets of identification underscores the constructed nature of identity, as

Claire Ainsworth, "The Stranger Within," NewScientist, November 15.

Pugeliese argued that there is a close connection, particularly in its eugenic origins, but
I find this more coincidental than meaningful. Current biometrics professionals that I
spoke with see the connection as an odd annoyance, and do not really see much overlap.
And, ultimately, there are enough clear and direct connections to eugenics, e.g. Francis
Galton, father of both eugenics and fingerprinting, that it is unnecessary to veer into
semantic play to make this point Pugliese, Biometrics : Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics. See
also, Mattelart, La Globalisation De La Surveillance : Aux Origines De L'ordre SeCuritaire.
92
93

55

biometrics signifies both the process of measuring bios (biological life)

and the bios itself. In other words, bio-metrics is the measuring of life
as well as the measured life. This is important because identity is an
object created through a technological assemblage and not an alwaysalready existing fact to be discovered or, to use Heideggers
terminology, brought forth.
The ontological slippage is visible in the oft-repeated description of
identity consisting of something you know, something you have, or
something you are. Something you have refers to tokens such as ID
cards, documents, or even clothing (e.g. a uniform), something that you
know refers to either pieces of knowledge that are memorized, such as
passwords or motion sequences, or answers to questions that only the
person in question should know, and something you are refers to
biometrics, your physiological or behavioral characteristics as read by a
machine. Identity management systems view the security of these various
levels as ascending from what you have to what you are. That
what you know is considered to be less secure, and more importantly, is
not considered to be central to who you are, exposes the biases towards
the stability of materiality. Psychological continuity is deemed to be
subservient, and for the purposes of identification inferior, to corporeal
continuity. This is not, however, corporeal continuity as understood

56

through lived experience, just as what you know is not truly a

representation of ones real mind or ken. These are rather all distilled
versions of possession, knowledge and bodies that are created, recorded,
and reviewed for the sole purpose of establishing idem-identity.
One aspect of identity that is not mentioned here, but is nonetheless
just as important and arguably underlies the acceptance of all three, is
preformative identity. In presenting an identity card, answering a
security question, or being fingerprinted, there are particular ways of
acting the role of the identified, and playing a specific part in the
construction of the surveillance assemblage. A simple example: a poor
person who shows an ID card in order to gain access to welfare benefits
will come under increased suspicion and will even possibly be turned
away if they do not perform their poverty. In fact, the revealing and
concealing of identity is itself a preformative act, what Bryan Pfaffenberg
would call a technological drama, in which power is being asserted or
contested.94 Who can ask for proof of identity? How must they connote
that they have this authority? How hard must a person attempt to swipe
their fingers properly, or at least look like they are trying to cooperate
with the demands of the machine? These are all preformative aspects of

94

Bryan Pfaffenberger, "Technological Dramas," Science and Technology 17, no. 3.

57

the identification assemblage, and are the moments through which the
sinews of power manifest themselves.
That identity has an underlying preformative aspect also points to
the somewhat neglected fact that identity is, fundamentally, relational.
The unstable but oft-present use of the term trust in identification
discourse is indicative of the relational basis for these programs.95 This
can be straightforward: one can be granted identity and the requisite
privileges/problems through recognition by another person. This is the
way the Unique Identity Authority of India deals with the problem of
individuals who do not have any documentary proof of identity. It uses
an introducer system, whereby trusted individuals (workers from
non-governmental organizations, local politicians, etc.) are able to vouch
for the identity of the undocumented.96 The NPR, the rival identity
authentication agency in India, takes this a step further: the final stage of
enrolling individuals in its database is making public all identities given,
which can be either verified or denounced.97 Yet even those with
documents are merely relying upon an establishment of a relationship of
David-Olivier; Benoist Jaquet-Chiffelle, Emmanuel; Haenni, Rolf; Wenger, Florent;
Zwingelberg, Harald, "Virtual Persons and Identities," in The Future of Idenitity in the
Information Society: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Kai; Royer Rannenberg, Denis;
Deuker, Andre (Berlin: Springer-Verlag).
96 Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI, "Uidai Strategy Overview: Creating a
Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India," ed. Planning Commission (New
Delhi, India: Planning Commission, Government of India).
97 Department of Information Technology National Population Register, "Faqs," National
Institute of Electronics and Information Technology, http://ditnpr.nic.in/FAQs.aspx.
95

58

trust, in this case that of the individual to the state agency that created the
documents, and of the state to the person requesting them. In fact, it is
possible to say that practices of identification are elaborate performances
that simultaneously create and verify the relationship between the
individual, the granter of the identity, and the identifiers. Thus the
description of identity with the triad of what you have, know or are is
inadequate, not only because it misses the ways in which identity can be
(and often is) established through performance and relationships, it places
emphasis of identity on obtaining and verifying proof of a pre-existing
object rather than on the constructive, social process of trust.

The Uneasy Prosthetic

In January of 2004, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben
canceled his trip to the United States for a conference held at New York
University. In an editorial published in the German Sddeutsche Zeitung
titled Bodies Without Words: Against the Biopolitical Tattoo, Agamben
explained that his sudden cancellation was due to the fact that the United
States now required all foreign nationals to submit to data registration and
fingerprinting under the new US VISIT program. This program,
according to Agamben, would lead to a new relationship between
individuals and states characterized no longer [by] the free and active

59

participation on the political level, but the appropriation and registration

of the most private and unsheltered element, that is the biological life of
bodies the citizen is thus rendered a suspect all along Per definitionem,
mankind has been declared the most dangerous of all classes.98
Although I will argue against many of his arguments in Chapter III,
admittedly some truth rings through it. Fingerprints and Anthropometry,
the first tools of modern identification regimes, were products of colonial
rule and continue to be most closely associated in popular culture with the
criminal justice system.99 Yet as anyone who has inadvertently forgotten
his or her ID card knows, to be unidentifiable is undesirable.
Identification schemes are mediatic systems, by specifying what it is that
these systems mediate: nothing less than the manifested relationship
between the state and its subjects. As argued by John Torpey, the rise of
the modern nation-state necessitated increased points of contact between a
subject and the government, not as landed peasantry but as individual
citizens.100 Torpey characterized these multiplied connections between
the state and its subjects as the embrace of citizens, the simultaneous
grasping of those with whom it has a formal relationship and

Giorgio Agamben, "Bodies without Words: Against the Biopolitical Tattoo," German
Law Journal 5, no. 2 (2004): 169.
99 I will discuss the particulars of Agambens concern with biometrics, and in particular
his use of the tattoo as a metaphor for these concerns, in depth in Chapter 3.
100 Torpey, The Invention of the Passport : Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State.
98

60

excluding of those that are not its citizens.101 To posit that the goal of
universal identification is an unachievable fantasy is far from saying that
projects of identification have not been successful or are not powerful.
In fact, the limitations of these systems increase their potency rather
than reduce it. For while being included in a system of identification
opens the possibility of abuse by government officials or their proxies,
being excluded removes an individual from any legal or normalized
relationship with the state. As argued by Valentin Groebner, the history
of both pre-modern and modern identification is one of negation or
exclusion, and identification documents originated as integral to this
process of exception.102 Identification carves a line between the free and
the unfree on the bodies of the unfree.103 Those who are excluded
become what Judith Butler calls abject, unlivable bodies, bodies that are
not yet subjects, but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of
the subject in a very literal sense.104 To use Agambens arguments, those
who are not identified exist in the state of exception, outside of the legal
relationship with the state and thus reduced to bios (biological being),
bereft of zoe (political life).

The Invention of the Passport : Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, 11.
Groebner, Who Are You? : Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern
Europe, 251.
103 DuBois, Torture and Truth, 63.
104 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (New York:
Routledge), 3.
101
102

61

This presents a conundrum; to be identified is to be incorporated

into a system of governmentality that may be actively hostile, and to be
unidentified is to be abject bios! Jacques Lacans discussion of the mirror
stage of development, during which a child recognizes itself in the
mirror for the first time and externalizes its self-image to the object, is
helpful here. Lacan calls the totality that is the child-image together an
orthopedic. Like a prosthetic arm that completes the wounded soldier, the
image sutures and completes the very wound (or the lack) that it
created.105 The mirror stage should not be considered simply as an
important point of child psychology, but rather as an analogy for the way
in which our identities and realities are formulated through mediated
representations that act as prosthetic attachments and mimetic controls.
Biometric systems of identification can therefore be seen as an
uncanny mirror, a media of self for the subject. The use of biometrics to
verify or extract the true identities of individuals out of their bodies
presents the scanned individual with an imagio of himself, an identity that
possesses a greater truth than he by himself can produce. In holding
still for the facial recognition technology, pressing firmly on the
fingerprint scanner, the individual is channeling the structures of power
in his gestures, creating a digital template that he must then replicate and

105

Jacques Lacan, crits : A Selection (New York: Norton, 1977), 4.

62

reproduce to show that he is indeed himself. The biometric template

becomes the prosthesis without which he cannot function as a whole
individual; it creates a lack that must be filled. For Individuals who are
full citizens, who use their biometric identification to demand particular
rights and privileges, this prosthesis is merely another cybernetic
extension (as per Katherine Hayles).106 But for those who exist in
subjection to the system of identification or in excess to it, for the refugee
or the illegal immigrant, these processes produce a lack that is filled with a
prosthesis that is foreign and in opposition to them, an ill fit that is a
constant reminder of lack. To be fingerprinted as an illegal immigrant is
to have ones own body appropriated as a tool that defines the immigrant
as absence, as the non-citizen. Yet the absence of prosthesis
(identification) does not help the undocumented immigrant, for the lack
remains, an absence un-filled by mediating measure.
But even absence is potentially presence, a way of being what John
Torpey calls insiders without.107 The term used for the protocols put in
place to deal with the outliers in biometric programs is exception
processing. This seems quite apropos, for Agamben (following Carl

N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,

Literature, and Informatics (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press). As I will argue, the
cybernetic extension can easily become an uneasy prosthetic if its validity is questioned.
107 John Torpey, "Imperial Embrace? Identification and Constraints on Mobility in a
Hegemonic Empire," in Global Surveillance and Policing : Borders, Security, Identity, ed. Elia
Zureik and Mark B. Salter (Cullompton ; Portland, Ore.: Willan).
106

63

Schmitt) calls the state of exception the threshold of the juridical

order, and that the sovereign, who decides when to invoke the state of
the exception exists outside of the juridical order but also belongs to
it.108 In other words, the exception is that which lies outside of the law,
yet in defining its boundaries nonetheless belongs. This is also in line
with Jaques Derridas description of the supplement, that adds only to
replace its place is assigned in the structure by the mark of an
emptiness.109 In other words, the supplement is that which is added to
fill a perceived lack, yet in doing so remains external to and outside of the
whole. They are (to use another Derridian term) an excess that cannot
be represented by system yet must be included.110 Biometric exceptions
are supplements to the normal population, simultaneously external and
central to the operation of the system as a whole. The possibility of fraud
or misidentification becomes the basis for each encounter of the state and
its subjects, and as these encounters increase within burgeoning
biopolitical regimes, so too does the burden of proof and the importance
of dealing properly with exceptions. This is the struggle at the heart of
identification programs: they are the contested and negotiated boundaries
between governmentality and politics, between the database state and the
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Corrected ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press), 281.
110 Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 117.
108
109

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always/already exceptions.

65

CHAPTER III
BODY, WHO ARE YOU?
SHIFTING EPISTEMOLOGIES OF IDENTIFICATION AND THE
AUSCHWITZ TATTOO
My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our
left arm until we die It seems this is the real, true initiation.
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz111
The tattooed man is thus the one who is excluded, the one who has no meaning,
who does not belong to the system of written signifiers.
-Jean-Thierry Maertens, Le dessein sur la peau112
Introduction: The Specter of the Tattooed Number
There are many specters that haunt the technologies of biometrics;
some are fictional allegories such as George Orwells Big Brother or Franz
Kafkas bureaucratic nightmares in The Trial or The Castle, others are
historical antecedents such as anthropometry or identity badges. The
most horrific of these shades is the use of tattoos by Nazi Germany to
identify a portion of its prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex.
The Auschwitz tattoo casts such a long shadow over biometrics for it

Primo Levi and Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz ; and, the Reawakening : Two Memoirs
(New York: Summit Books, 1986).
112 Quoted in: Jane Caplan, ""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State": Tattoos and
the Discourses of Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," in Criminals and Their Scientists: The
History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell
(New York: Cambridge University Press; German Historical Institute, 2006), 337.
111

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represents the worst possibilities of identification technologies in a way

that Orwell and Kafka could not evoke; it is another case of reality
outpacing fiction in grotesque imagination. Yet what are the lessons to be
learned from the Auschwitz tattoo regarding the developing role of
biometric technologies in modern contexts? Is the genealogical link of
technologically enabled totalitarianism direct or even present?
I argue that the Holocaust tattoo represented both a continuity with
and radical rupture from the historical development of identification
technologies. Certainly, the Nazis were not the first to tattoo prisoners or
others deemed undesirable. Neither is the practice of giving individuals
some type of numerical identifier a radical invention of the Third Reich,
nor did this practice cease with its fall. Yet the combination of these
techniques of bureaucratic ordering and body markings was as
unprecedented as it was without successors. This is not to say that the
tattooing of serial numbers may in some form make a comeback in the
future, but the outlook for such a possibility is weak. This of course
cannot be explained by any lack of genocide or concentration camps
before or after World War II (both of which sadly occurred); the tattoo did
not even spread beyond Auschwitz to any of the other Nazi camps. The
Auschwitz tattoo simply must be seen as a dead branch in the tree of

67

identification technologies, born out of the necessities of a very particular

set of circumstances and terminated when those circumstances collapsed.
That technologies should not be understood outside of the social
and historical contexts of their use is hardly a novel idea. In fact, the
social and historical contexts are as integral to the working of a technology
as its gears, or to be more germane, its needles and inks. That the
numerical tattoo was unique to Auschwitz gives this precept even greater
weight. In short, the Auschwitz tattoo is wholly exceptional historically
and comparisons to modern technologies, particularly biometrics, will
inevitably lead to distortions and improper parallels. That said, it is
possible to gain lessons from the logics and issues that gave rise to the
tattoo in the camp and that kept it from spreading elsewhere. In this, I
follow a field of study called media archaeology, or perhaps it is more
appropriate here to call this a media autopsy.
There are two lines of inquiry that I followed to excavate the
Auschwitz tattoo. First, I constructed, primarily through secondary
literature, a rough genealogy of the tattoo as a form of identification by the
state in Western Europe,113 including its transformation from a form of

The genealogy focuses on Western Europe due to my desire to contextualize the penal
tattoo in Auschwitz, a decidedly Western European event. I am similarly not including
in my genealogy the many uses and permutations of tattooing by individuals for selfexpression, religious purposes, or tribal affiliation (all of which have a rich history in
Europe) in order to keep this chapter both of manageable length and primarily focused
on the use of identification by state bureaucracies.
113

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writing on individuals to a means by which individuals could be

read. Second, I conducted archival research on the use of tattooing by
the Schutzstaffel (the paramilitary unit also known as the SS) at
Auschwitz in order to make explicit exactly why and how inmates began
to be tattooed and what role it played in the camp. Having established
these contexts, both general and specific, I lay out what can be learned
from the Auschwitz tattoo and what relevance it has to current
identification programs.

Legible Bodies: A Brief Historical Review of the Tattoo in Europe

Although the term tattoo was brought back from Polynesia by
sailors returning from colonial exploits (Captain James Cook is
particularly associated with this import),114 the actual practice has a long
history in Europe that can be traced as far back as the Egyptian empire
and ancient Greece.115 One of the most interesting and useful descriptions

The term used by the Greeks and Romans was stigma or stigmata, which traces its
etymological roots to the Greek word stizein or to prick C. P. Jones, "Stigma and
Tattoo," in Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane
Caplan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press), 1, 4.. The term tattoo instead
comes from Captain Cooks description of the practice of Tahitian Tattows or tatau,
meaning to mark or to strike Jane Caplan, ed. Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European
and American History (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), xv.
115 Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, xi-xix. For the
purposes of this paper, I am going to rely on Caplans definition of tattoos: the
puncturing of the skin and insertion of an indelible pigment into the dermis to a depth
between .25 and .5 cm, by means of a needle or other sharp instrument Written on the
Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, 255. Thus branding, piercing, or
scarification, while still important to our discussion, remain distinct.
114

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of the use of tattoos in Greece comes from Page duBois, who, in her book
Torture and Truth, describes the way in which the torture basanos and, in
some cases, tattooing of slaves was used to produce evidence for Greek
jury trials around 500- 400 BC.116 Whereas free men were allowed to give
testimony at a trial, the statements of slaves could only be used if given
under torture.117 Once extracted, however, the testimony of the slave
under torture was consistently privileged as belonging to a higher order
of truth than that evidence freely offered by citizens.118 Similarly, duBois
describes how one slave was tattooed with a secret message from his
master on his shaved head and was sent, after the slaves hair had grown
back, with instructions that the intended receiver of the message was to
shave the slaves head.119 The slave was unaware of what the message on
his head stated; he was merely the vessel of these words.
The juxtaposition of these two stories is important, for as duBois
argues, they illustrate the ancient Greeks particular metaphysical
assumptions regarding truth creation. Essentially, free men will be
deceived by clever arguments; slaves by nature will not be misled because
they think with their bodies. Slaves are bodies; citizens posses logos, or

DuBois, Torture and Truth, 48-49.

Torture and Truth, 49.
118 Torture and Truth, 66.
119 Torture and Truth, 70.
116
117

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reason..120 The free man can therefore conjure a lie, even under the pain
of torture, for he is able to reason beyond his biological present. Slaves,
on the other hand, do not possess logos and hence when subjected to
basanos will speak the truth through their pain. Slaves (and, likewise,
other beings that lack reason like women and some foreigners) are thus
capable of being a receptacle for truth; they can be filled with it or have
it literally tattooed upon their bodies (as with the case of the messenger),
but they are ultimately incapable of understanding or independently
producing it.121 In this manner the tattooed individuals bodies can be
understood as what Jacques Derrida calls the support, or the bodysubject or body-substance, an immobile and impassible surface
underlying the traces that may come along and affect it from the outside,
superficially, as events, or accidents, or qualities.122
Yet this form of truth-making inherent in the Grecian tattoo, borne
and retrieved unsullied via the receptacle or support of the slaves
body, also creates (or rather re-produces and displays in perpetuity) the
difference between those who can be tattooed and those who cannot. In
Torture and Truth, 52.
Torture and Truth, 70, 78.
122 Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press), 6. Susan Gubar also points directly to this metaphor of the
body (particularly the female body) as a blank page awaiting inscription and the male as
the writer, quoted in Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe, "The Marked and the
Un(Re)Marked: Tattoo and Gender in Theory and Narrative," in Tattoo, Torture,
Mutilation, and Adornment : The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text, ed. Frances
E. Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe, Suny Series, the Body in Culture, History, and Religion
(Albany: State University of New York Press), 164.
120
121

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other words, to be a slave (not-free) means that one can be tattooed, and to
be tattooed places an eternal, physical signifier of ones slavery on ones
skin. It is a practice that carves a line between the free and the unfree on
the bodies of the unfree.123 This is an important distinction to keep in
mind when contemplating the tattoos of Auschwitz, for neither Germans
nor reeducation prisoners were tattooed with their serial numbers.
Then, as in ancient Greece, the tattoo was a carving of the distinction
between the German and non-German, racially corrigible and incorrigible.
Yet, as described in detail by Mark Gustafson, slaves were not the
only group to be tattooed by the ancient Greeks and, in their wake, the
Romans; criminals were also subjected to this practice.124 Gustafson
outlines three distinguishable variations in the mark applied to criminals
in the Greco-Roman world: the most well-attested drew attention to the
crime that had been committed; a second represented the ruler and a
third named the punishment.125 As argued by Michel Foucault, both the
first and the third variation of punitive tattoos (name of the crime and
name of the punishment) are in fact derivatives of the second (name of the
ruler), for by breaking the law, the offender has touched the very person
DuBois, Torture and Truth, 63.
Mark Gustafson, "The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond," in Written on
the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.:
Princeton University Press), 22.
125 "The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond," in Written on the Body: The Tattoo
in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University
Press), 28.
123
124

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of the prince, and it is the prince, or at least those to whom he has

delegated his force, who seizes upon the body of the condemned man and
displays it marked, beaten, broke, and through the tattoo it was the task
of the guilty man to bear openly his condemnation and the truth of the
crime that he had committed in him, on him, the sentence had to be
legible to all.126 This practice of displaying sovereign power through the
bodies of the deviant continued throughout the Middle Ages, and was
present even as late as the middle of the 19th century in European legal
practice, although branding became the preferred method of writing in
the later stages of its usage.127
It is important to note in greater depth the importance of
identification, or naming, in the European tattoo. As is argued by Juliet
Fleming, both the fascination and the fear that modern liberal imagination
finds in tattoos stems from both its permanence and its superficiality:
The fantasy (since, even before laser technology allowed
their removal, it was always possible to write over, and so
change, a tattoo) is one that admits in the first instance to the
negative possibility that the subject is named on the body
(the debate about tattooing is thus in part a debate about
Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison, 49, 44.
As noted by Clare Anderson, the 1532 Carolina penal codes which allowed for the
branding of criminals faces was in operation in eighteenth-century Germany, France
branded forced laborers with the letters TP (travaux perpetuels) until 1832, and the
branding of convicts in Siberia was not abolished until 1863 Clare Anderson, "Godna:
Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century," in Written on the Body: The Tattoo
in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University
Press), 106. The use of tattoos and branding as a penal practice in European colonies did
not abate until later, as will be discussed shortly.
126
127

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whether individuality can survive certain modes of

representation). The suggestion that identity is constituted,
not in the depths, but at the outer surface of the subject, is
experienced by the Cartesian cogito as a type of
claustrophobia: nominor ergo sum the tattoo can be thought
of as a poisoned (that is, poisoning) name: like other names,
it wounds by threatening to reduce the subject to a function
of itself.128
Here, Fleming captures the conflict between modern subject creation and
the specter of the tattoo. The tattoo makes ones identity, ones Dasein,
permanent, legible, and external. To be marked such is nightmarish for
the modern subject. It means relinquishing the right to self-constitution
and, consequently, to a self. To tattoo a name (or a number) upon an
individual is to trap them in their own skin, robbing them of their
humanity and transforming them into a thing. While earlier ontologies
were comfortable with the conflation of name and essence (Fleming draws
our attention specifically to Elizabethan England), to those who witness
it from the outside (that is, from positions of historical, cultural, or social
distance), the tattoo appears as a scandalously prosthetic act of namingone that labels, rather than divines, the essence of a person or thing.129
Thus the practice of penal tattooing fell out of favor in Europe in the
middle of the 19th century with the rise of Enlightenment thought, which
extolled the virtuous universality of the man of reason.

128
129

Juliet Fleming, "The Renaissance Tattoo," ibid., 63.

"The Renaissance Tattoo," 82.

74

Although it is clear that the practice of tattooing in Europe has a

long and intricate history, the importance of colonialism to the history of
the tattoo in Europe should not be ignored. As argued by Alfred Gell, it is
impossible to make any clear distinction between western ideas about
tattooing as a characteristic of the ethnic Other- the tattooed nativeversus perceptions of tattooing as a stigma of the class Other- i.e., the
tattooed sailor or the tattooed criminal.130 The fact that the modern word
tattoo comes from Polynesia is further of no small consequence. The
colonial experience did not introduce tattooing into western culture, but it
converged with and reinforced western conceptions of the practice,131
reinflecting them.132 As is shown by William Cummings, the tattooed
other was not merely represented to Europe through the body of the
sailor and the criminal, but also with the very bodies and body parts of
Polynesians that were brought back and displayed to civilized
society.133 These tattooed bodies were, quite literally, the material upon
which Orientalism could be inscribed and with which Orientalism could,
in a very real sense, inscribe itself.134 Thus, following Enzo Traversos

Alfred Gell, Wrapping in Images : Tattooing in Polynesia, Oxford Studies in Social and
Cultural Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
131 Caplan, Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, xx.
132 Clare Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality, and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford
;: New York, NY Berg, 2004), 59.
133 William Cummings, "Orientalism's Corporeal Dimension," Journal of Colonialism and
Colonial History 4, no. 2 (2003).
134 Ibid.
130

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statement that the world of machines, trains, and industrial production

could not be fully understood by citizens of industrializing nations unless
set in opposition to the living portrait of a primitive, savage dark age,135
we can see the importance of the displayed tattooed body (both live, dead
and represented)136 in creating not only the ethnic other but also in the
creation of the occidental self.
Gell makes a strong case that this transfer of meaning was not a
one-way process, for the symbolic exchange with sailors that led to the
spread of tattooing into the mariner habitus affected Polynesian
conceptions of tattoo as well.137 Yet the subtle exchange described by
Gell between the early explorers and the natives they encountered is
arguably less important than the use of tattoos by Europeans in their
administration of the colonies post-conquest. In the Americas, West
Indies, and Indian Ocean the tattooing of slave populations was often
Enzo Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: New Press,
2003), 47.
136 Cummings relates the fascinating tales of Omai, the Tahitian who returned with
Captain Cook, and Lee Boo, a Palauan who became the Black Prince of the English
dinner circuit until he died of small pox six months after arriving, both of whom were
made into representatives not only of their whole society but of the orient itself. Even
more interesting, perhaps, is the story of Jean Baptiste Cabri, a Frenchman who tattooed
himself from head to foot and took the stage name Omi (a direct reference to Omai) and
worked the circus circuit. When he died in Valenciennes in 1822, the local museum
heard of his death too late to carry out their plan to make his contribution to science more
permanent by tanning his tattooed skin Cummings, "Orientalism's Corporeal
Dimension." Many German entertainers who followed in Omis wake were incarcerated
in insane asylums and then killed in euthanasia programs. See: Stephan Oettermann,
"On Display: Tattooed Entertainers in America and Germany," in Written on the Body: The
Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton
University Press, 2000).
137 Gell, Wrapping in Images : Tattooing in Polynesia, 10.
135

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used as a punitive measure (a practice that continued through the

American Civil War), and bodily marking or mutilation were written into
several colonial penal codes, such as the one enforced by the British East
India Company.138 In India, it is possible to see an interesting confluence
of both the inscription of tattoos as a penal method (branding by gonda,
the Hindi verb for tattooing) and the reading of native tattoos as a means
to discern and demarcate deviance. Indians were administered and
categorized with bureaucratic zeal, yet punished with medieval cruelty.139
Tattoos in India were at the center of the integration of criminological
theory and eugenics. Tattoos were seen as marks of lower castes, the
tribal adivasi groups, who were read by the British to be hereditarily
inclined towards criminality and sloth.140
Yet just as the tattooing of individuals became, along with other
forms of corporal punishment, generally frowned upon as a judicial
practice within Europe, tattoos gained new significance and signification
with the rise of criminal anthropology and forensic science. Cesare
Lombroso, founder of the Italian school of criminology, and Alexandre
Lacassagne, the influential French criminologist, bitterly disagreed about
the origin of criminality. Lombroso was convinced that it was due to

Anderson, "Godna: Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century," 107.

Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality, and Colonialism in South Asia, 15-36, 63.
140 "Godna: Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century," 105-06.
138
139

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inherited characteristics, the so-called born criminal, while Lacassagne

argued that degeneracy was a product of environmental factors. Both
agreed that tattoos were a clear sign of criminal tendencies and collected
between them several thousand pictures or sketchings (assisted, in no
small part, by amateur reports published by prison wardens, police
officers or medical personnel).141 Both Lombroso and Lacassagne scoured
these images, respectively inducing and deducing the connection between
the bestiality and/or savagery of the criminal and the characteristics of
tattooing. In the words of Lombroso, it was a mark of:
Those classes who share with [primitive people] the same
violent passions, the same dullness of sense, the same
childish vanity, the long periods of idleness, and in the case
of prostitutes the nakedness that among savages are the
principal incentives to this strange usage for tattooing is
one of the special characteristics of primitive man and those
in a state of savagery.142

Caplan, ""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State": Tattoos and the Discourses of
Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," 347-49. Lombroso first published his first and best
known book Luomo deliquente (Criminal Man) in 1876 (which went through 5 subsequent
editions), and although his ideas began to suffer internationally around 1890 with the rise
of Lacassagne and other rivals, his thought remained influential years after his death in
1909 and can even be traced through the Fascist regime. See: Mary S. Gibson, "Cesare
Lombroso and Italian Criminology: Theory and Practice," in Criminals and Their Scientists
: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, ed. Peter Becker and Richard F.
Wetzell (New York: Cambridge University Press; German Historical Institute, 2006), 14058.. Lacassagne came to prominence in criticizing Lombroso at the first criminal
anthropology conference held in Rome in 1885, and maintained relevance in the field
(and, subsequently, in the Eugenics movement) until his death in 1924. See: Laurent
Mucchielli, "Criminology, Hygienism, and Eugenics in France, 1870-1914: Medical
Debates on the Elimination of "Incorrigible" Criminals," ibid., 213-27.
142 Caesar Lombroso, quoted in Caplan, ""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State":
Tattoos and the Discourses of Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," 345.
141

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Tattoos were thus seen as a mark of the primitive other,

either the racial other of the savage or the class other of the criminal
or prostitute,143 a mark that was not imposed on them like the
Greco-Roman stigma but was rather inscribed by the tattooed
individuals themselves. The tattooed criminal is thus doubly other,
not only are their tattoos a mark of nihilistic or primitive
tendencies, they are material evidence of the surrender of logos to
bios. They have been reduced in their being to base materiality,
which can then be interpreted or utilized by others, by those who
have maintained their logos. Even Louis Vervaeck, the chief
physician at Brussels Minmes jail who conducted his own analysis
of over 14,000 tattoos and denied that the tattooed man is an
abnormal being who is developmentally arrested or degenerate,
argued that tattooing should be actively discouraged through harsh
measures such as cauterization by fire so as to [confine
tattooing] to those milieux that in essence tend to glorify it, it will
become the true characteristic of the criminal, the depraved, and
the degenerate.144

Hence Traversos clever subtitle Class Racism in describing the theories of

Lombroso and his contemporaries: Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence, 106.
144 Caplan, ""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State": Tattoos and the Discourses of
Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," 358.
143

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The criminological theories of Lombroso and Lacassagne were

being formulated at the same time that the identification of individual
criminals via the categorization and archival of their physical
characteristics, anthropometry or Bertillonage (after its creator,
Alphonse Bertillon), was in widespread use.145 Tattoos were of particular
importance to this system. As stated by Ambroise Tardieu:
The confirmation of identity, whether its object is a
mutilated or unknown corpse, or to overcome the silence or
simulation of an accused person, demands the most
minute attention and scrupulous examination of all parts of
the body or the least remains of a cadaver. The tattoos that
are discovered by this means should be described in every
detail with the greatest care, and even on occasion
depicted.146
The tattoo as juridical signifier thus shifted along with the change from
what Foucault calls regimes of punish to regimes of discipline, or the
political anatomy of detail.147 In the anthropometric system, the tattoo
was not an indicator of criminality or of savagery, but was rather an
""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State": Tattoos and the Discourses of
Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," 342. Bertillonage was eventually replaced with
modern forensic science, specifically by fingerprinting in a dramatic court case in 1905.
While fingerprints were also held by their early promoters- notably Francis Galton, who
coined the term eugenics- to hold within them particular truths (race, degeneracy,
evolutionary superiority, etc), these views were eventually marginalized by practitioners
who wanted to maintain expert objectivity when identifying suspects. Though
marginalized, studies of this nature are still being produced. See, for a detailed and
fascinating history of anthropometry and fingerprints: Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of
Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification.
146 Quoted in: Caplan, ""One of the Strangest Relics of a Former State": Tattoos and the
Discourses of Criminality in Europe, 1880-1920," 342. Tardieu was in fact a predecessor
of Bertillon, but the latter took the observations of the former quite seriously in
formulating his system of bodily measurement and identification.
147 Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison, 139.
145

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indexical mark that (when properly documented and categorized) linked

the body in question to the criminal record.
Yet it is easy to see how the two different gazes at the tattooed
individual, i.e. the categorizing gaze of Lombroso and Lacassagne and the
identifying gaze of Tardieu and Bertillon, were different sides of the same
metaphysical coin. While the former reads the truth of the individuals
primitive or savage nature in the tattooed body, the latter reads the truth
of the individuals indelible identity. Just as the slaves in ancient Greece
were unwitting receptacles for the truths of their masters, the deviants in
the 19th century held in their bodies truths that they did not comprehend
but which could be read by the trained analyst: for each body, an
immutable identity; for each identity, an immutable social category.148
Tattoos, while not the only aspect of the criminals body read by the
analyst, were a clear demarcation by which the line between life and death
was carved and made legible.

This is not to say that in all European countries at all times were tattoos negatively
connoted as such. Indeed, Celtic (or Pict) tattoos can be traced back to the fifth century
BC, and there is a tradition of tattooing in early Christianity that can be traced through
the crusades and into the 17th century as a sign of servitude to, and suffering for, Christ
(it is from this practice that the term stigmata gains its current definition). Charles W.
MacQuarrie, "Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth and Metaphor," in Written on the
Body: The Tattoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (Princeton, N. J.:
Princeton University Press, 2000), 34-43. It is also telling that in Victorian England, where
tattoos among the working and even middle class were more common place (although
the variations in style and practice maintained strict class lines), Lombrosian criminology
found little traction. James Bradley, "Body Commodification? Class and Tattoos in
Victorian Britain," ibid., 138-39, 48.
148

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While anthropometry heralded a new form of identification, in

which an individuals body would become an empty signifier for their
identity as opposed to the pregnant hieroglyph hungrily studied by early
criminologists, it was through fingerprinting that the new regime of
identification gained legitimacy. Bertillons method was to take exact
anthropometric measurements of particular dimensions of the body- head,
arms, feet, etc. - and to index this data on standardized cards. Since
anthropometric identification could only statistically provide negative
verification (i.e. that someone is not who they are alleged to be), Bertillon
included note space in these cards for the portrait parl, or verbal portrait,
which allowed the identification of escaped delinquents; the tabulation of
distinctive marks, which alone could ensure forensic certainty; and the
addition of photographs, which personalized the anthropometric
measurements.149 Although Bertillonage used the same tools as
anthropology, its fundamental function was not one of divination or even
division, but rather a bureaucratic method of indexing and cataloguing.
As stated by Simon Cole, Bertillon envisioned nothing less than the
complete reduction of human identity to a language of notations which
Martine Kaluszynski, "Republican Identity: Bertillonage as Government Technique," in
Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, ed.
Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 125-26;
Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 37. Although
identical twins are usually the case used to describe the potential shortcomings of
Bertillonage, it is quite possible that two unrelated individuals have statistically identical
anthropometric measurements.
149

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could be organized and accessed at will.150 Bertillons system studiously

removed the individual from their social context, seizing instead on those
aspects of the individuals material body that can be transformed into
standardized language and numerical values.151
At the turn of the 20th century, Bertillonage found itself under siege
from a new technology of identification, fingerprinting (also called
Dactylscopy), which would ultimately render the old system obsolete and
radically expand the uses and usage of identification. It has been known
since antiquity that the papillary ridges of fingertips are arranged in
various complex patterns. The impressions of the fingertips embossed on
clay seals that were used as signatures can be traced as far back as the Han
Dynasty of China (202 BCE- 220 CE), from which the practice spread
throughout Asia.152 In 1303, the Persian historian Rashid-eddin declared
after having observed the Chinese practice that Experience shows that no
two individuals have fingers precisely alike.153 It was not until the mid18th century that a young colonial administrator in British-controlled India
named William Herschel began taking impressions of prisoners fingertips
dipped in ink for future identification, and an English medical doctor
living in Japan named Henry Faulds suggested that bloody finger-marks
Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 49.
Becker, "The Standardized Gaze: The Standardization of the Search Warrant in the
Nineteenth-Century Germany," 148.
152 Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 60-61.
153 Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 61.
150
151

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or impressions on clay, glass, etc. could be used for the scientific

identification of criminals.154
Yet the recognition of the potential of fingerprints for criminal
identification was insufficient for its implementation, for fingerprints, like
photographs, were severely limited in their use without a standardized
method of description and cataloging. Sir Francis Galton, cousin of
Charles Darwin, called the father of eugenics, was contacted by both
Herschel and Faulds about the potential of fingerprints and created a set
of categories with which fingerprints could be indexed.155 Galton did not
envision the use of fingerprinting in Europe. He was a staunch supporter
of Bertillonage in Britain, but really saw it as a tool for colonial
administration:
In civilized lands, honest citizens rarely need additional
means of identification to their signatures, their
photographs, and to personal introductions In India and
in many of our Colonies the absence of satisfactory means
for identifying persons of other races is seriously felt. The
natives are mostly unable to sign; their features are not
readily distinguished by Europeans; and in too many cases

Herschel and Faulds (and their respective acolytes) would bitterly argue over the
mantle of who had discovered fingerprint identification for most of their adult lives.
Historians now consider both as having significantly contributed to the genesis of the
technique. See: Colin Beavan, Fingerprints : The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder
Case That Launched Forensic Science, 1st ed. (New York: Hyperion), 42, 74-76, 196.
155 Galtons system was based on earlier observations of fingerprints by the Czech
physician Jan Evangelista Purkyne, who classified fingerprint patterns into nine separate
categories. Galton reduced Purkyns categories to three basic shapes- loops, whorls, and
arches- with the possibility to further describe and compare minutia for the exact
matching of different prints. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Identification, 77-78.
154

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they are characterized by a strange amount of litigiousness,

willness and unveracity.156
Galtons concerns were not without basis. While Bertillonage was
introduced with great excitement by the colonial administrators in India,
many of the characteristics required for the portrait parl looked, to the
colonists gaze, to be too similar among the natives to be of any use.
Further frustrating the implementation of Bertillonage was the lack of
facilities and properly trained clerks necessary for the long and exacting
process of anthropometric measurement.157 There was an enhanced sense
of urgency regarding the identification of Indians. The British had created
and perpetuated among its officers the notion that certain castes and tribes
were hereditary criminals to be exterminated or closely administered.158
It was here that fingerprinting saw its first practical application, and its
use quickly spread, ultimately replacing Bertillions more complex and
variable system of bodily description.
Although the shift from Bertillonage to fingerprints in the
processing of criminal identities was arguably due to the latters

Francis Galton, Fingerprints (Buffalo, N.Y.: W.S. Hein), 138.

Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 81.
158 Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 67-69. In India it
was also possible at this time to see an interesting confluence of both the inscription of
tattoos as a penal method (branding by gonda, the Hindi verb for tattooing) and the
reading of native tattoos as a means to discern and demarcate deviance- Indians were
administered and categorized with bureaucratic zeal, yet punished with medieval
cruelty. Anderson, Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality, and Colonialism in South Asia, 15-36, 63.
156
157

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administrative efficiency and ability to identify racial and sexual others,159

it was its role as a nascent forensic science that granted the technology
sufficient legitimacy to completely supplant anthropometry in routine
police practice.160 In order to maintain the objectivity and distance
required by the courts of its expert witnesses, Dactylscopy rejected any
theories of reading heredity into ridge patterns (Galton, for one, had
hoped that fingerprints would become a biological coat of arms),
thereby turning fingerprints into an empty indexical signifier. 161 In the
words of Anne Joseph, fingerprints signaled a changing conception of
identity- from a frozen image in a photograph and a string of
measurements of body parts to an image of patterned lines and ridges;
from a construction that construed identity as emanating from the whole

Even the most famous case of identity mistaken under Bertillonage that was solved by
Dactylscopy, in which a new prisoner named Will West was falsely identified as William
West, a murder who happened to already be incarcerated at the same prison, involved
two African American men- underscoring once again the difficulties the European eye
had identifing the racial other. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Identification, 140-43.
160 Bertillon, while initially disdainful of what he called the Chinese method,
unsuccessfully attempted to integrate fingerprints into his system as merely another
physiognomic characteristic. Although even early adherents to Dactylscopy such as
Argentina continued to keep both Bertillonage records as well as fingerprints into the
mid- 1920s, by the early 1930s few if any police departments utilized anthropometric
methods. Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, 161-65.
161 Attempts to divine sex, race and other hereditary information from fingerprint
patterns continue to this day, although they are marginalized in the scientific
community. Beavan, Fingerprints : The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case That
Launched Forensic Science, 99-105; Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Identification, 117-18.
159

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to a formulation of permanent identification from a part.162 The portrait

parl described in Bertillons cards became an empty vessel which could
be filled or drained of content (such as a criminal record), while
nonetheless being indelibly linked to an individuals actual body and its
traces.
The development of Anthropomentry and Dactylscopy occurred at
the same time as the invention of another technology designed to better
track citizens: the punch-card computer, which was invented to ease the
counting and tabulation of the census. It was not be until much later that
these two technologies (bodily identification and computerization) fully
merged with the development of computerized fingerprinting in the
1960s.163 It is with the dawn of digital digits that most discussions of
modern biometrics start, for it is through automation that computerized
sorting, tabulation, and sharing became possible.164 It should be clear,
however, that even prior to the introduction of digital automation the
shifting locus of identification from the individuals body to the clerks file
cards enabled a means by which to visualize, analyze, and manage the

Anne M. Joseph, "Anthorpometry, the Police Expert, and the Deptford Murders: The
Contested Introduction of Fingerpringint for the Identification of Criminals in Late
Victorian and Edwardian Britain," in Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of
State Practices in the Modern World, ed. Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 183.
163 Philip M. Parker, ed. Biometric: Webster's Timeline History 1853-2007 (San Diego, CA:
Icon Group International).
164 Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity.
162

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populace in new ways. Modern forms of identification are interested in

reading identity off the body, and with reading comes analysis; identity
files become data that can be tabulated, sorted, made into statistics, and
searched. Anthropometry began as a means to grant lenience to first time
offenders, but it spread due to its ability to make visible the recidivists
both in regards to their number and demographics.165

The Tattoo in Auschwitz

With this historical context firmly in place, it is possible to
construct the continuities and ruptures that the Auschwitz tattoo
represented. Of all the images that emerged from the Holocaust, arguably
few have risen to the iconic status of the serial number tattooed on the left
arms of those processed by the camps. These tattoos have been featured
prominently in both film and fiction,166 and younger generations have
tattooed themselves in a similar fashion as a symbolic act of solidarity and
remembrance.167 Despite its symbolic and metaphorical prominence,
Kaluszynski, "Republican Identity: Bertillonage as Government Technique,"?
See, for just a few examples, the movies Sophies Choice, X-Men, in television Curb Your
Enthusiasm, or in literature: Lyn Lifshin and Joseph Cowles, Blue Tattoo : Poems of the
Holocaust (Desert Hot Springs, CA: Event Horizon Press, 1995).
167 Magician David Blane, who is Jewish, had Primo Levis number tattooed on his arm
after reading Survival in Auschwitz. There is an ongoing discussion, visible in online
forums, among the Jewish community as to the acceptability and utility of such
memorial tattoos, especially in light of the fact that Leviticus 19:28 states: ye shall not
make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you: I
am the Lord, thus forbidding tattoos. See: Douglas Belkin, "Jews with Tattoos," Boston
Globe, August 15 2004.
165
166

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however, only a relatively small portion of those individuals who entered

the Nazi system of concentration camps was actually tattooed. In fact,
tattoos were only given in one camp, Auschwitz, from the period of 19411945 (eight years after the establishment of Dachau), and then only to
prisoners who were registered for purposes of forced labor.168 There
were several series of serial number used at Auschwitz. The first, started
in 1940 and ending in 1944, was given to male Jewish prisoners, and
ended at the number 202,499.169 Another series was given to Soviet
prisoners from 1941-1944, and was given to approximately 12,000
prisoners. The third was given to women, starting in 1942, and were
assigned to approximately 90,000 female prisoners. To deal with the
influx of Hungarian Jews, a new numbering system was given to women
and men starting with the letter A. At the number 20,000 a B series was
started, while women continued to be tattooed with the letter A up to the
Tadeusz Iwaszko, "Deportation to the Camp and Registration of Prisoners," in
Auschwitz : Nazi Extermination Camp, ed. Franciszek; wiebocka Piper, Teresa; Czech,
Danuta (Warsaw: Interpress Publishers), 60.See also: United States Holocaust Museum,
"Tattoos and Numbers: The System of Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz," Holocaust
Encyclopedia(2007),
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007056.
169 Herman Black claims that the Holocaust tattoo was started as an outgrowth of
Hollerith numbers, citing the case of a Polish prisoner whose tattooed number was the
typical 5 digit Hollerith number, and because he has found evidence of a Hollerith
department within Auschwitz. Yet these numbers were serial and unique to Auschwitz.
I dont believe that the validity of the claim- that IBMs Hollerith machine was the
impetus for the Holocaust tattoo- is truly a fundamental issue for either his or my
arguments, but I find the link dubious. Serial numbers may certainly have been used for
and by Hollerith tabulation, but there is no necessary correlation between the two. And
that the prisoners were given a unique identifying number, whether or not it was
counted using IBM hardware, does nothing to illuminate the practice of tattooing them
on the prisoners arms.
168

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number 30,000. Around 15,000 men were tattooed with B series

numbers. Roughly, 9,000 prisoners were registered in the reeducation
program, and some of their numbers were recycled. Roma were given
their own numbers starting with a Z in 1943, with one series for men
(10,094 numbers assigned) and one for women (10,888 numbers assigned).
In total, approximately 400,000 serial numbers were assigned, yet
many of them (either Germans or reeducation prisoners) did not have
their numbers tattooed on their arms. Those sent directly to the gas
chambers, approximately 75% of all those who arrived at the camp, were
never registered and therefore never tattooed.170 Additionally, Aryans
and prisoners for reeducation, i.e. non-Jews interned for shirking work
detail, were exempted from having their serial number physically written
on their arms.171 It can therefore be estimated that considerably fewer
than the 400,000 people who received serial numbers at Auschwitz were
in fact tattooed, less than 4% of the estimated 9 to 11 million victims of the
Holocaust.172

Museum, "Tattoos and Numbers: The System of Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz".

Ibid.
172. Ibid. While numbers vary from source to source, the estimate of 9 to 11 million
victims of the Holocaust (when including Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Roma,
Jehovahs Witnesses, and other groups persecuted by the Nazis) is the generally accepted
estimate. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, "A Teacher's Guide to the
Holocaust: The Victims," College of Education, University of South Florida
http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/people/victims.htm. It has also been recently discovered
that there were 42,500 ghettos and camps throughout Europe, making the singularity of
the tattoo at Auschwitz all the more striking. Eric Lichtblau, "The Holocaust Just Got
More Shocking," The New York Times, March 1.
170
171

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The tattoo was not even initially written on the prisoners arms, but
rather on their chests. This was done with the use of a stamp with
moveable needles, which was pressed into the prisoners chest creating
wounds into which ink was rubbed. The practice arose with the arrival of
Russian prisoners of war, who died faster than the camp administration
could keep track and whose clothes (and thereby numbers and identities)
were easily taken by other prisoners.173 Tattoos were also used in the
infirmary, where prisoners who were deemed too sick to survive were
tattooed with an L for leiche or corpse, and on prisoners scheduled
for execution so that their bodies could be identified after the fact. It is not
clear when tattooing of Jews became a common practice, but the
Kalendrum clearly indicates that the escape of a Polish woman, Zofia
Biedowa, in February of 1943 exposed irregularities in the numbers of
individual prisoners, which led the Commandants Office to declare that
all men and women should get their number tattooed on the lower left
arm, excepting ethnic Germans and re-education prisoners.174
Perhaps most apparent is that the act of tattooing writes on an
individuals body as opposed to simply reading it, and that while postEnlightenment Europe was eager to read deviance it had lost interest in
Simon Gutman recalls the spread of tattoos after substitutions were discovered,
explaining that For example, when Poles, who were influential inside the Schreibstube,
wanted to protect somebody, the substituted his number for a dead persons one.
174 Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945, 1st American ed. (New York: H. Holt),
335-36.
173

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actively marking it upon the deviants body. This is of course a somewhat

literal use of the terms writing and reading, as opposed to authors
such as Michel de Certeau, who states that there is no law that is not
inscribed on bodies, and that from the instruments of scarification,
tattooing and primitive initiation to those of penal justice, tools work on
the body.175 For de Certeau, the tools of discipline such as handcuffs and
prison cells inscribe in a way that are directly analogous to the tattoo.
Yet intuitively this is a specious argument. Certainly the instruments of
the state act upon individual bodies, but the revulsion that the Auschwitz
tattoo inspires speaks to a qualitative difference between it and other
penal technologies. It is important to note that de Certeau aligns tattooing
with primitive initiation, as he sees it as an antiquated tool practiced by
Others- Others of the past, Others of the primitive (who live in a state of
being in the past). In this he is in agreement with the early criminologists.
And while he is clearly stating that modern penal technologies inscribe
power on bodies in the same way as tattoos, actual tattooing of power is a
relic.
There is then, even for those who would argue for an ontological
continuity, a break between the practice of tattooing and modern regimes
of identification (e.g. those that read identity from bodily and
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California
Press), 139-41.
175

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biographic traces). Technologies of written identity mark power on the

individual, and it is the state that is legible through the individual.
Technologies of read identity on the other hand make the individual
legible to the state, which can then exercise power through techniques of
discipline and control. The Holocaust occurred well within de Certeaus
lifetime (he was born in 1925); the Auschwitz tattoo was an anachronism,
a technology out of its time. Certainly slaves in the United States had
been branded, and colonial subjects tattooed by the British, but both of
these practices had long since ceased by the advent of WWII. It was a
technology of writing identity in a time of reading.
Keeping this framework in mind, that which makes the Auschwitz
tattoo particularly obtrusive is what was tattooed: a serial number, at times
accompanied by a symbol marking Jewish heritage. The number was, as
with fingerprints, an empty signifier. Its meaning was not held internally,
but rather in the records to which it was linked. The significance of the
Auschwitz tattoo was therefore double: it signified that the individual was
a prisoner by virtue of being tattooed, and it signified the link to the lists
and files kept by Nazi bureaucrats. This double signification took on a
mutated meaning. While serial numbers are often used as indexical
intermediaries between a bureaucracy and its subjects (individuals being
only one such subject- groups, events, locations, and even nations can be

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thus catalogued), that this mediating, inherently meaningless sign was

tattooed on prisoners reduced them not merely to a function of
themselves as described by Flemming, but a function of a function. This
is qualitatively different than previous penal tattooing, which only
marked an individual as a member of a group. The tattooed serial
number was individualized, and inasmuch as it was the means through
which the prisoners interacted with the camp, it became the individuals
name.
This movement is evident in the description of the Auschwitz
tattoo erasing or replacing the name of the prisoner. A few examples of
Auchwitz survivors discussing their tattoos:
The tattoo I didnt exist as Raymond Kamoiner anymore, I
was number 3823. Raymond Kamoiner
All that was done to dehumanize people. There were no more
names. There was only this: nothing but a number. - Marcel
Stourdze
From that moment on, I ceased to be a human being. I stopped
feeling, thinking. I no longer had a name, an address. I was
prisoner no 55908. And that same moment, with every jab of the
needle, a piece of my life dropped away.- Zywulska, K 1998 Tanz
In Auschwitz we were just numbers, without faces or souls - Sara
Nomber-Przytyk
A serial number dispenses you from having had a name, having
had a soul, having had a life. - Sim Kessel
I became A-7713. After that I had no other name.
Henceforth I would be, merely, KZ Prisoner Number A 8450.

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Mine was 55091- my new name from now on.

A filthy needle erased Natan Schapelski from the human race
and brought into being Haeftling 134138.176
Perhaps the most famous survivor, Primo Levi, specifically describes both
the marking of the tattoo as well as its replacement of the individuals
name by stating that:
The operation was not very painful and lasted no more than a
minute, but it was traumatic. Its symbolic meaning was clear to
everyone: this is an indelible mark, you will never leave here; this is
the mark with which slaves are branded and cattle sent to the
slaughter, and that is what you have become. You no longer have a
name, this is your new name.177
It needs to be noted that the connection being made here is between
names and ones humanity or soul. According to these survivors, the
assignment of a number was not merely the adding of a placeholder with
which they were tracked and indexed, it constituted the erasure of
something essential to their sense of personhood. Their former selves
were destroyed, replaced with new identities of Haeftling (prisoner)
and a number.
Yet why was this the case? The answer seems intuitively apparent:
the assignment of a serial number, as argued by Sofsky, was not a
qualitative criterion of identity; it was a quantitative sign, a dot in an
Quoted in Mascia-Lees and Sharpe, "The Marked and the Un(Re)Marked: Tattoo and
Gender in Theory and Narrative."
177 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 1st Vintage International ed. (New York:
Vintage International), 119.
176

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endless series [which] signified the metamorphosis of the individual into

an element of the mass, the transformation of personal society into the
serial society of the nameless.178 It is not hard then to draw parallels, as
Agamben does, between the Auschwitz numbers and systems of
biometrics that similarly reduce a persons identity to a number or a
digitized physical trait. Yet even in the camp, individual names and
histories did not disappear. In fact, the camp inmates incorporated some
of these biographical facts into the interpretation of the numbers
themselves. Low numbers indicated that a prisoner had been in the camp
for a long time, while high numbers, belonging to millionaires,
indicated new inmates who may be unaware of the rules of survival in the
camp. Country of origin could also be read into the camp number, as
trains often carried groups of people from the same country who would
thereby be processed at the same time, giving a similar range of numbers.
To reiterate, the tattoo given in Auschwitz identified an individual
in three ways: it marked them, it numbered them, and it named them. In
marking them, it denoted them as prisoners; it carved the line between
free and unfree simply by its presence. In naming them, it created a new
identity, that of the individual Auschwitz prisoner as prisoner, with which
it could interact. And in numbering them, the SS made them legible to the
Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror : The Concentration Camp (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press), 84.
178

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bureaucratic machinery that ran the camp. The act of marking is the
method of writing identity; to number is one of the first steps in reading.
The Auschwitz tattoo is an historical anomaly because it was
simultaneously both marking and numbering. To name a person,
however, is to give a new identity, an act that occurs both in writing and
in reading identity. To identify is a constructive act, it does not divine a
persons true essence but rather creates a medium through which the
individual is legible. Depending on the medium and the structure that
creates it, it can limit, define or categorize an individual in particular
ways. As succinctly put by David Lyon, identification is ipso facto social
sorting.179 This identity, however, is but one among many that an
individual possesses over a lifetime. Identification is an act of social
construction, and this means that there are many parties involved in its
creation and maintenance, including the individual themselves. This was
apparent even in Auschwitz, where hierarchies of race and social position
were read into the empty signifier of the serial number.
Paul Ricouer usefully distinguishes between idem and ipse
identities. Idem-identities focus on the continuity of the discrete
individual over time, whereas ipse-identities focus on narrative
constructions of the self. It needs to be made clear that in my taxonomy,

179

Lyon, Surveillance as Social Sorting : Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination.

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marks and numbers are two forms of idem-identities, whereas by the term
names I am denoting ipse-identities. Actual names (Paul Ricouer) play a
role in both the idem and the ipse, for it is through ones name that various
agencies, organizations and social spheres track and connect the
individual, while at the same time providing a signifier around which to
build ones narrative self. The Auschwitz tattoo was a re-naming because
it not only provided a new idem-identity, but because the ipse-identity it
connotes, that of prisoner, was so powerful and traumatic it attempted
to blot out any connection to other narrative selves. In discussing his
writings on the Holocaust, survivor Ka-tzetnik states that he used the
pronoun I, I, I till half way through a piece I suddenly had to transform
I to he I felt the split, the ordeal, the alienation of it.180 Sofsky also
argues that the admission ritual of the camp, tattoo inclusive, did not
mark either a shift in social status or a temporary reversal. It was a
permanent degradation, a fundamental transformation of personal and
social existence It did not assure the continuity of time; rather, it was a
radical rupture [that] did not regulate biographical transition; it destroyed
the cohesion of personal history.181 The Auschwitz tattoo was a renaming of in both senses of ipse and idem, a difference that is often
Quoted in David Patterson, Sun Turned to Darkness : Memory and Recovery in the
Holocaust Memoir, 1st ed., Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust (Syracuse, N.Y.:
Syracuse University Press), 161.
181 Sofsky, The Order of Terror : The Concentration Camp, 83.
180

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conflated by surveillance critics, and ignored by those who would

attribute state control only to that of idem-identities.
Importantly, however, the name of an individual was replaced by
the serial number in their dealings with the camp, but not with their
relationships with other prisoners. This is clearly present in the writings
of Primo Levi, who only referred to one prisoner by number:
He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero
Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone
was ware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null
Achtzehn is no longer a man. I think that even he has forgotten his
name, certainly he acts as if this was so.
Everyone else Levi called by name or nationality.182 To have a number
did not erase names in the camp, but being a musselman, having become
the living dead of the camp, did, and it was only then that one was
reduced to the number. It speaks to the power of the SS over the prisoners
at Auschwitz that their relationship with one another overwhelmed the
alternative identities and understandings of self of the prisoner. Many
survivors spoke of the disconnect they felt with themselves, that they saw
their bodies as belonging to another person, alien to who they were before
and after the camp. This came not through the number tattooed on their
arm (although it was admittedly part of the process), but rather as Sofsky
so richly details due to the systematic degradation of their physical and

182

Levi and Levi, Survival in Auschwitz ; and, the Reawakening : Two Memoirs, 42.

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psychological integrity through the constant threat of random violence,

abuse, and death. According to Sofsky, part of the absolute power of
the camp was the absolute power to label. It was decisive in
determining who was allowed to exercise power as a prison-functionary,
who was granted temporary protection, who was exposed to ruinous,
ravaging labor, what rations a prisoner received.183 It was not the act of
tattooing that over-coded the identities of the prisoners, but rather the
ability of the camp to undermine and degrade all sense of self that existed
outside of its will- and even in that, as can be seen in the testimonies of the
survivors who maintained a sense of humanity or were able to rebuild it
afterwards, it did not always succeed.
That the numbers were originally stamped upon the prisoners
chests can lead to an interesting inference: the SS may have tattooed
prisoners because they themselves had been tattooed. Following the
British practice, the SS tattooed their blood types on their chests, a practice
that greatly helped the survival of the soldiers in the field. While the
Germans certainly knew of tattooing, and may have even known of its use
in controlling a subjugated populace through their admiration of other
British bureaucratic techniques (e.g. godna in India), it is quite likely that it
was simply their own, individual experience with the tattoo that led them

183

Sofsky, The Order of Terror : The Concentration Camp, 19.

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to this practical problem of the steady stream of unidentifiable corpses.

This led to interesting complications in some cases after the war, as Dr.
Mengle was able to escape initial capture through his lack of a tattoo (he
had managed to avoid being inscribed), and one Holocaust survivor was
roughly treated upon return to France because it was thought that his
chest tattoo indicated his SS affiliation.184
This is not irony, that the SS tattoo became a means by which the
allied forces identified and captured the Nazis. Nor is it strange that the
Auschwitz tattoo became a means by which survivors were able to
identify themselves to their liberators, and afterwards a means by which
to bear witness to the camp. The tattoos, like all forms of identification,
are signifiers. What they signify and to whom is an area of
contextualized, constructed, and contested meaning-making. The
vulnerabilities that such identification exposes one to, or defends one
against, can change as easily as the tides of war (which is to say, not really
easily, but often fast and in unexpected ways).
To make matters worse, even in situations where identification is in
place to grant protection, the instability of signs and the constructed
identities upon which they are built disallows any true respite from the
dangers of falling into undesirable categories. Put simply, the fact that
Simon Gutman, quoted in Gilles Cohen, Les Matricules Tatou*S Des Camps
D'auschwitz-Birkenau ([Paris: Les Fils et Filless des D*port*s Juifs de France).
184

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identification is imperfect is known with no greater certainty than by the

organization in charge of identifying the populace. There is a neverending arms race between the forces of identification and those who
would, for good or ill, subvert the system. Because of this, having
proper identification does not protect one from being misidentified or
having their identity questioned. That one must continually, and often to
the same individuals (e.g., security guards at buildings), produce proof of
ones identity is indicative of this fact. Thus an Auschwitz survivor is
mistaken for a member of the SS, and Holocaust deniers question the
validity of the witnesses tattoos. Similarly, Timothy Longman describes
how the mark Tutsi on identification cards was used to perpetrate
genocide in Rwanda, but how the official designation of Hutu did not
protect many individuals from being accused of secretly having Tutsi
ancestry (at times secret even from themselves!) and being killed.185
In the camp itself care had to be taken to ensure that there were no
discrepancies or deviations with ones tattoo lest its validity be called into
question. One survivor recalls asking for her 2 and 8 to be redone so
as to ensure their legibility, and another that having been tattooed on his
chest caused him to be constantly questioned by the guards (while to

Timothy Longman, "Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Perception, and Genocide in Rwanda,"

in Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World,
ed. Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press), 355.
185

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another, the chest tattoo signified having spent longer in the camp, and
thus gave him access to better food and clothing). This is in contrast to the
records kept by the SS, which contrary to the legends of German
efficiency, were often filled with gaps and mistakes. This again is not
irony, but rather a feature of power. Databases and records are fallible,
and this is accepted as given by both the bureaucrat and the subject.
Similarly, the objects of identification: paperwork, tattoos, fingers - are
likewise malleable and instable. Yet the burden of proof, both for the
errors of database and object, fall upon the individual. And as Pathar
Chatterjee astutely points out, modern governmental regimes must
presume every individual to be an imposter until he or she is able to prove
to the contrary but whereas identity may be disproved by evidence, it
can never be proved beyond doubt.186 Since positive proof of identity is
not possible but always required, the necessity to constantly maintain and
manage ones own identity is unending.
The question arises of why the tattooing only occurred at
Auschwitz. While it is unclear why tattooing serial numbers was limited
to the largest and most infamous of camps (the dearth of literature on the
subject again is quite surprising), it is nonetheless possible to conjecture
based on available evidence. The aspect that sets Auschwitz apart from
Partha Chatterjee, Princely Imposter? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of
Bhawal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 362-63.
186

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the other concentration camps the most is that it was both a labor camp
and an extermination center. In this way it was the manifestation of what
Traverso called the constant tension between work and extermination
that was found in the camps.187 In Auschwitz those who were not
immediately sent to the gas chamber were both working for extermination
(particularly the Sonderkommando) and being exterminated through work.188
The tattooing of prisoners was the overt recognition of this fact. While the
tattoo was placed only on those able to work in order to control and
organize their labor, the permanence of the tattoo was necessitated by the
recognition that the primary product of the camp was the prisoners
corpse (which could not be sufficiently controlled and organized by the
flexible medium of clothing).
Yet even with the understanding that tattooing was started as a
means to identify the bodies of the soon-to-be-dead, its use on all
prisoners (even babies) suggests that it fulfilled a need beyond that of its
original intention. The centrality of the tattoo at Auschwitz was hinted at
by Levi when he stated that it was through the tattoo that a prisoner
interacted with the camp.189 As argued by John Torpey in his discussion
of the development of the passport, identification is the means through

Traverso, The Origins of Nazi Violence, 34.

Ibid.
189 Levi and Levi, Survival in Auschwitz ; and, the Reawakening : Two Memoirs.
187
188

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which a state or an organization embraces an individual.190 Paperwork

and identity cards are the material manifestation of the relationship
between the individual and an organization. It is the point at which they
touch. This process is necessary, according to James C. Scott, for
complex organizations to make sense of, and thereby become able to act
upon, the mess that is reality; in other words, identification and
categorization make an individual legible to the state.191 In the context
of the camp, the tattoo was a literal inscription of legibility for the camp
commanders.
This point needs to be emphasized- the tattoo, while in place due to
the explicit recognition that the prisoner was being consigned to death,
was necessitated by the fact that the camp was still managing their lives.
As stated by Marlene Kadar:
We can therefore say that no tattoo embodies dissonance: it can
be read as both a sign of good luck and as a further erasure of
identity from history Here we have the ultimate irony: the trace
of an autobiography lives within the tattoo, but the tattoo is also
evidence of bodily mutilation, and therefore an act of genocide. At
the same time as the group was being destroyed, the tattoo was a
sign of the Nazi states permission to live, at least for a short
time.192

Torpey, The Invention of the Passport : Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, 1-6.
Scott, Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed, 1.
192 Marlene Kadar and ebrary Inc., Tracing the Autobiographical, (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press), http://site.ebrary.com/lib/princeton/Doc?id=10103850. 23435.
190
191

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This was recognized by some of the Auschwitz survivors, one of whom

recalls when he was registered that the tattoo, that number, meant
hope You dont lose your personality because of this tattoo, think were
going to be freed soon.193 Another stated that that tattoo, at that
moment, was a temporary stay of execution with that, we knew at least
that we would not be murdered that night.194 What is at play is not
irony, but rather the contradictions inherent to Auschwitz being both
death and labor camp, and of the fundamental necessities of biopolitics.
To use Agambens terminology, as soon as the regulation of bios comes
into play in a bureaucratic system, there must be some form of mediating
technology to embrace and make the individual legible. To be marked
as prisoner of Auschwitz was horrific and traumatizing. It was to be
made abject, as convincingly argued by Nicholas Chare, but the
alternative was death.
Why then was the tattoo necessary? Was it really just another
means of humiliation and dehumanization, as so many have argued? I
posit that it was the Nazis fear of slippage- of misidentification, of
escapes, of not having absolute control at all times- that led to their brutal
form of identification. Part of this was that there was officially no zoe
inherent in the prisoners; there was no official relationship. It continues to
193
194

Cohen, Les Matricules Tatou*S Des Camps D'auschwitz-Birkenau.

Holocaust Survivors Discuss Their Tattoos, Why Their Numbers Count (New York, NY).

106

be a cruel contradiction of identification, visible in the piles of paper

carried around by undocumented immigrants,195 that the lack of a stable
relationship between the state and an individual results in more severe
and excessive points of contact. But even more importantly, the desire for
total control of the prisoners forces the fragility of identity into the open:
in the camp bodies, biographies, and possessions were mutilated and
destroyed as a matter of routine. That the Nazis were concerned about
this instability undermining their own power should be no surprise.
Photographs or fingerprints were not sufficient. The reliability of both in
a realm where physical disfigurement is the norm is inherently
insufficient. Thus the tattoo: the inscription of bureaucratic legibility on a
body that was too unstable to be read. The tighter the embrace of a
bureaucracy, the greater its fear of leaks becomes, and the more it
attempts to find ontological security in the materiality of the bodies of its
subjects. Modern biometrics (distinguished by automation) trace their
roots to the necessities of the U.S. prison system.196 This is borne less out
of fear of escapes, than out of concern that a prisoners whereabouts in the
prison itself is not constantly known. As argued by Emilio Mordini and
Corinna Ottolini, identity is important when it is weak, i.e. the creation
of idem-identities is vital when the ipse-identity is disrupted or
195
196

Ticktin, "Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France."
Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity, 52.

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destroyed.197 Yet, even more than this, identification is necessary in

prisons precisely because the probability of slippage is small. The closer
the power becomes to a totality, the greater the concern becomes about the
excess.

Conclusion: The Anachronism of the Biopolitical Tattoo

Figure III-1: Child Displaying Auschwitz Tattoo198

Perhaps the most influential thinker who has made the connection
between the Auschwitz tattoo and biometrics is Italian philosopher

Emilio; Ottolini Mordini, Corinna, "Body Identification, Biometrics and Medicine:

Ethical and Social Considerations," lAnn Ist Super Sanit 43, no. 1.
198
"Child Displaying Holocaust Tattoo," in Photographs Documenting the Holocaust in Hungary,
ed. Lszl Karsai (The Holocaust History Project).
197

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Giorgio Agamben.199 Agambens opposition to biometrics is rooted in his

firm belief that it reshapes the relationship between individuals and the
state in the same way that the tattoo in the camp obliterated the
individual. In explaining his decision not to attend a conference held in
the U.S. due to the implementation of biometric technologies for the
identification of all foreigners, Giorgio Agamben argued that these
biopolitical tattoos call to memory that the practice of tattooing the
inmates in Auschwitz was possibly regarded as a normal and economical
form of regulating the incorporation of the deported ones into the
camp.200 Refusing to participate in this program was for Agamben not
merely a matter of individual sensitivity, but rather a concern that
nothing less than the normal, legal-political (better: biopolitical) status of
citizens in the so-called democratic states. These technologies led to a
new relationship between individuals and states characterized by no
longer [by] the free and active participation on the political level, but the
appropriation and registration of the most private and unsheltered
element, that is the biological life of bodies.201 More recently, in a longer
article on biometric technologies, Agamben further states that [a]s the

Although not mentioned by name, the IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional training
materials specifically describe, and then dismiss, his argument. IEEE, "Certified
Biometrics Professional Learning System: Module 5 Social, Cultural and Legal
Implications."
200 Agamben, "Bodies without Words: Against the Biopolitical Tattoo."
201 "Bodies without Words: Against the Biopolitical Tattoo," 168..
199

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deportees to Auschwitz no longer had either a name or a nationality, and

were by then only the numbers that had been tattooed on their arms, so
contemporary citizens, lost in an anonymous mass and reduced to the
level of potential criminals, are defined by nothing other than their
biometric data and their DNA.202
In short, Agamben is positing that biometrics, like the tattoo,
replaces individual identity with bodily being and that this reduces the
relationship of citizens to that of amorphous masses and potential
criminals. This is in line with his broader theorization that modern
sovereignty is based on the creation of bare life, i.e. bodies that exist
outside of the law and politics, and whose creation demarcates both the
boundaries of and the ultimate power of the sovereign. It is, according to
Agamben, not the states ability to create and enforce the law that gives it
power, but rather its ability to suspend or supersede the law, to create at
will places or circumstances in which political life does not apply; the
example par excellance of these spaces is the camp.
Agambens argument is seductive, as it provides a straight-forward
antagonistic position vis--vis biometric technologies, as they are ipsofacto a reduction of self to body by the state, and these bodies in their
reduced state are always-already the muselmaenner, the men and women
Giorgio Agamben, David Kishik, and Stefan Pedatella, Nudities, Meridian, Crossing
Aesthetics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press), 52.
202

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driven to a zombie-like existence between life and death by starvation and

the horror of life in the camp. This relationship between identification and
and subjugation, identities being overcoded or laid bare, is a common
trope in academic studies on biometrics.203
Yet, just as not all experiences of the Holocaust can be represented
by the plight of the muselmaenner, there is more to the use of tattooing as
identification than the blue numbers of Auschwitz. As stated by Robert
Eaglestone, Agambens bare life is too bare.204 As sympathetic as I am
to Agambens political project, the current diversity of biometric
technologies and their varied uses defies blanket rejection. The only way
to make such an argument is to ascribe a singular motivation and unified
agency behind their development and deployments, a simplification that I
categorically deny.
The tattooing of serial numbers on the chests and then arms of
prisoners at Auschwitz was an historically unique event in regards to
identification practice, but its very uniqueness makes it an important site
of analysis for the understanding of modern identification. Prior to the
enlightenment, penal tattooing in Europe was done to slaves, criminals

See, for example Pugliese, Biometrics : Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics; Magnet, When
Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity; Mller, Security, Risk and the
Biometric State : Governing Borders and Bodies. Wolfgang Sofsky, Privacy : A Manifesto
(Princeton: Princeton University Press).
204 Robert Eaglestone, The Holocaust and the Postmodern (Oxford ; New York: Oxford
University Press), 323.
203

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and deviants as a means of inscribing power on the very bodies of those

who were deemed transgressive. It was a form of marking identity, of
literally carving lines between those who were normal and those who
were deviant.
Even in this act, there was the understanding that the bodies of the
subaltern were receptacles of truth that could not be understood by those
who held it, but rather read and understood by those who possessed
reason. Enlightenment-inspired understandings of the self and its
relationship to the body caused this form of identification and punishment
to go out of fashion, and identity was instead read off of the bodies of the
individuals rather than inscribed. In this, tattoos continued to play a role
as deviance was seen as being inscribed by the individual upon
themselves, deviance that was still unknowable to the tattooed person but
legible to the criminologist and judge. At this time, new forms of
identification that utilized, as best as possible, empty signifiers of first
body measurements and then fingerprint ridges became widely utilized.
The height of empty signifiers is that of the serial number, which is
intended to signify nothing but continuity of the individual.
The Auschwitz tattoo was an anachronism in that it was an empty
signifier that was inscribed, rather than read, off the prisoners body. In
this it was simultaneously mark, number, and importantly, name. The act

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of naming did not come directly from its inscription, but from the
absolute power of the camp to destroy the psychological and even
physical continuity with their former (and any hoped future) selves. In
this it not only assigned an idem-identity, but took control of the
individuals ipse-identity. Importantly, this naming was less a factor of
having the number (permanently) assigned, but rather due to the social
relations constructed by the camp. The number then became a contested
site of meaning making, both in the camp (as a means of determining
social hierarchy) and after Auschwitz was liberated. That the prison
tattoo became a form of sacred witness, and the SS tattoo one of
damnation is indicative of the floating nature of signs and their ability to
have their meanings changed regardless of the rigidity of initial design or
intent. It is the way in which social relations are shaped by identification
technologies, and to what extent they are shaped by them, that provides
the power of naming, not the initial act of identity assignment. In this
regard, the daily practice of being counted after a work detail or the
differential treatment of lower numbered prisoners had much more
impact on the ipse-identity of the individual than their number. Above all
of this, being marked by the tattoo as prisoner certainly held more
significance than having ones file created. Biometric technologies do not
mark individuals, at least not in the way that tattooing marks them.

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Social relationships can be and of course are significantly affected

by identification, be it as friendly or enemy in Iraq or as deserving of food
assistance or not in India. Categories can be created that, to use Ian
Hackings terminology, make up people, and identification is the
primary process by which these categories are made real.205 But it is a
mistake to assign the locus of this power to the media and not the
relationships that they enable. As is clear from the discussion of the camp
tattoo, the prisoners did not think of themselves or each other as their
numbers unless all other aspects of their personalities had been destroyed.
Their identities were overcoded, they were named, only when there
was nothing else left but the relationship between their bodies and the
camp/death. While the fantasy of a single, unified identity with which a
bureaucracy can interface is strong, the fact is that people live
multifaceted, diverse lives and the extent to which these are concealed or
revealed, siloed, or unified is a matter of constant political and social
negotiation.
The ambiguity of identity is a source of power for the modern state.
Following Sofsky, it was the arbitrary nature of the terror and the violence
of the camp that imbued it with a totality of power over its prisoners.206

Ian Hacking, "Making up People: Clinical Classifications," London Review of Books 28,
no. 16-17.
206 Sofsky, The Order of Terror : The Concentration Camp.
205

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The tattoo was, when given, a moment of reprieve, a sign that the newly
christened inmate would not die that night. But it held no sway over the
camp as a means to demand rights as there were no rights to be had, and
as the woman that had her tattoo re-done so that the numbers were clear
shows, any irregularities meant punishment or death.

Timothy Logan

showed how this exact dynamic occurs in a modern context (Rwanda and
ID cards). What this means, however, for contexts far afield from the
genocides of Auschwitz and Rwanda is that identity can only be absolute
in the negative. It can be used to permanently deny rights, but as a tool of
demand, it is contingent and fickle.
Finally, the tattoo was a means of regulating life in the camp,
despite its express purpose of producing death. Where there is biopolitics,
there is identification, and the greater the desire for control, the greater the
fear of slippage. Perhaps the most important lesson a scholar of
identification can gain from studying the Auschwitz tattoo is that
exposing the instability of the epistemological foundations of the selfcorporeal, psychological, social- as was done in the camp, does not
decrease the drive for identification but rather intensifies it. In its desire
for totality of control, the grasp of the bureaucratic apparatus becomes
more penetrating and severe, holding on to the supposed immutable

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materiality of the body despite its own routine mutilation of the very same
bodies.
That greater control leads to a deeper anxiety over slippage is not
exclusive to questions of identification. As argued by Ian Hacking, the
shift from deterministic to probabilistic perspectives leads to a push for
greater control.207 Chance, especially small chance, becomes something
that can be minimized or eliminated, while fate is inalterable. This does
not bode well for biometric programs, probabilistic technologies that they
are. 99.99% accuracy feels like a totality, but the .01% means that risk has
not been eliminated and mistakes will be made, especially at scale. This
leads to pushes for better technologies, more modalities, and enhanced
surveillance, and the smaller the possibility for misidentification becomes
the greater the anxiety about it will become.208 It is the capture of those
who are unidentifiable- the escapees, the fraudsters, the invisible- that
drives the need for identification, yet it is precisely these individuals who
exceed the states grasp. And so the grip of the state must become ever
tighter, searching for ontological certainty in a material stability that does
not exist. The ever-increasing points of contact between the state and
individuals-as-individuals will merely extend and entrench this logic.
Hacking, The Taming of Chance.
This anxiety is also a potential source of resistance to state surveillance, in pointing out
the inability of these technologies to deliver the totalities they promise. It is also a source
of concern when, like in India, biometrics are being put in place to ensure rights and
benefits.
207
208

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CHAPTER IV
ENABLING ARMED SOCIAL WORK:
THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF BIOMETRIC
TECHNOLOGIES BY THE UNITED STATES MILITARY IN IRAQ AND
AFGHANISTAN
"A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or
shoot him on the spot?
-Anh Duong, inventor of the bunker buster, on her efforts to
create mobile biometrics for the U.S. military
A Majority of are Gray.
-U.S. Central Command Power point slide, unclear on even what is
primarily gray or unknown
Introduction: Identity and Barbed Wire

Figure IV-1: From the B-roll of the Freedom Watch Update209

209

AFN Afghanistan, "There's Nowhere to Hiide (Hide) in Khost Province," (youtube.com).

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American Forces Network Afghanistan, the U.S. military-produced

television station for troopers abroad, airs an internal news program
called Freedom Watch Update. In a report that aired August 28th, 2007
a unit of the 101st Airborne sets up a checkpoint to biometrically capture
the local populace as they move through their daily routines. Images show
young, US soldiers setting up the checkpoint, fingerprinting and
photographing smiling or stoic Afghanistanis with what looks like a large,
clunky camera.210 The broadcast is a compilation of selected highlights
depicting what the U.S. military wants biometrics to be. Yet a little
digging online yields a more complicated picture, as revealed in the Bfootage for the broadcast that is posted on Youtube.211 It is edited in an
odd, non-linear fashion, with long silent takes of the desolate landscape
reminiscent of a college art film. In it, the soldiers struggle to get the
fingerprints and images of faces to register properly. The blinking of one
Afghan man and the improper pressure applied to the device by another
frustrates them. One of the soldiers asks a young-ish Afghanistani his
age, and is told through the translator that the young man is 18; the
soldier scoffs, and says the young man must be 20, entering the data
into the system (it is unclear from the video which age was entered).

210

"Soldiers Collect Biometric Data During Counterinsurgency Operations in Khost Provice,"

(youtube.com).
211
"There's Nowhere to Hiide (Hide) in Khost Province."

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Another shot shows the translator wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a

headscarf around his face to obscure his identity.
The full video, both the news segment and the B-roll, when
considered together, portray the two faces of the biometric technologies
developed by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and deployed in Iraq
and Afghanistan. On one hand, they represent an efficient, reliable
technology used for capturing enemies. On the other, they are an
unstable, contested system aimed towards the general population. The
clips make it evident that the stakes are high when it comes to interactions
between the US soldiers and the Afghanistanis mediated by the biometric
devices. Participating poses particular risks for allies (the translator
clearly does not want to be identified), and must be negotiated by both the
citizens and the soldiers. Yet, the results are ambiguous. It is unclear if
any Taliban militants were captured, or innocent citizens detained. All
that is certain is that the U.S. militarys biometric database is being
expanded at the barrel of a gun and surrounded by barbed wire.
Although biometrics were not used beyond limited forensic
purposes prior to 1999, as of July 28th, 2011 the militarys Automated
Biometric Identification System (ABIS) surpassed six million total

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records.212 The importance of identification, and biometrics in particular,

to modern warfare is not self-evident nor was it inevitable. Instead, a
particular convergence of circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which
an entrenched insurgency combined with a proactive group of biometric
proponents led to the rapid deployment of the technology into the
battlefield. With the shift in strategy in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts
from regime change through air strikes and Special Forces to
counterinsurgency (known as war by governance) required the
identification of individual Iraqis and Aghanistanis, as the separation of
the general population from the enemy became the primary goal of the
war. This need coincided with a shift in leadership of the U.S. militarys
biometric offices that saw priorities change from computer and base
security to a broad application of the technology in the battlefield. These
two factors helped solidify a place for biometric technologies in the face of
internal opposition to doing police work.213 Now institutionally
established as the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA),
proponents of the technology are working hard to maintain the program
as an enduring capability that will transcend its genesis as a tool of
counterinsurgency. This chapter will focus on the years in which

Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Annual Report Fy 2011," ed. Department of

Defense (Washington, DC).
213 John D. Woodward Jr., April 27th, 2011.
212

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offensive biometrics were developed and deployed during the Iraq and
Afghanistan conflicts, particularly from 2004-2008 in order to understand
the nature and implications of their use.
It is important to note that the complete identification of the Iraqi
and Afghanistani populace was never completed, and that there are clear
limits to biometric technologies in actually addressing the complex social
issues they are meant to definitively solve. The gap between the fantasy of
an identification totality and the reality of limits of the technologies
creates an ambiguity that enables individual soldiers to take the initiative
necessary to make the day-to-day decisions required by a
counterinsurgency campaign, as seen in the B-role footage. Yet this very
ambiguity undermines the premise on which the identification
technologies rest, making every individual potentially suspect and a
threat. In the end, biometric technologies become tools to objectify and
legitimize the strategies and prejudices of the counterinsurgents. Despite
the desire to separate the population into clear categories that distinguish
friend from foe, or the Blue Forces from the Red Forces, the population
remains gray and the use of force arbitrary. While biometrics are a key
component of efforts to technologically fix the identities of the occupied
populace into a framework that allows clear military action, their use and
limitations should instead be seen to signify the persistence of the fog of

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war that confounds the overwhelming power of the U.S. military and
undercuts any attempt to win hearts and minds.
The observations in this chapter are based on government
documents, policies, and publicity materials produced by the U.S. military
and its contractors. This archival research was supplemented by on-site
interviews with U.S. military personnel, contractors and employees of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) who are working both in and with of the DoD on
developing its biometric programs, and participant-observation at
biometric industry conferences and events. This chapter is divided into
three sections. The first section charts the development of biometrics by
the DoD from 1999- present day focusing on the way in which
technologies of domestic surveillance played a role in their acceptance.
The second discusses the influence of shifting military doctrine on the use
of these technologies, and the third explores the factors that drive and
impede this process.

Identity Dominance and Management: A Brief Timeline of DoD

Biometrics
While the U.S. military has funded and tested biometric
technologies for years, it was only within the last decade that a concerted
effort has been made to utilize these technologies on a mass scale and in

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active combat theaters. It is only within the last five to six years, this
project can be considered to have become truly operational. While there
may seem to be a sense of inevitability regarding the use of biometric
technologies by the U.S. military, even in the period of rapid deployment
(2004-06) there were struggles surrounding the need for and the purpose
of biometric databases. This should come as no surprise, as those in
Science and Technology Studies would readily remind us; the use of
biometrics remains a hotly contested realm of possibility in terms of
design, policy and even purpose. There appear to be three major turning
points in the use of biometrics by the U.S. military: the creation of the
Biometrics Management Office (BMO) in 2000; the rapid expansion of
BMOs scope and capabilities in response to the counterinsurgency
campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004; and today, as members of the
Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BMIA) prepare for the
drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which requires a shift from
battlefield support to the spread of biometric technologies into the daily
routines of the U.S. Military, writ large.
By the late 1990s, biometrics- particularly in the form of
fingerprints- was over a century old, and had become a normalized tool
for law enforcement agencies. The U.S. military, hardly a slow adopter of
new technologies, had long integrated fingerprint analysis into its

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investigative units, but had not implemented biometric technologies

beyond forensic analysis and a limited deployment to control access to
sensitive areas. The military had already invest heavily in biometric
technologies research through the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency and the Information Processing Techniques Office, but nonforensic use of the technologies (differentiated by the real-time
identification aspect) had yet to be utilized by the military.214 Following a
congressional Network Vulnerability Assessment in Kosovo in 1999 that
highlighted problems of Information Assurance (now commonly
known as cybersecurity), the US Congress commissioned a feasibility
study that recommended biometric technologies as a potential solution to
these concerns that needed to be formalized, centralized, and funded.215
The Secretary of the Army was designated as the Executive Agent in
charge of this project in 2000, who then established the BMO to coordinate
all DoD biometric projects.216 The same year, the Biometrics Fusion

In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has historically been at
the forefront of funding for biometric technologies, but in the mid-1960s and the height
of the Cold War the research arms of the military became increasingly invested in the
technologies as well. See: Gates, Our Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and
the Culture of Surveillance; Arthur L. Norberg, Judy E. O'Neill, and Kerry J. Freedman,
Transforming Computer Technology : Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986,
Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology [New Ser., No. 18] (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press); John D. Woodward, Nicholas M. Orlans, and Peter T.
Higgins, Biometrics (New York: McGraw-Hill/Osborne); NSTC Subcomittee on
Biometrics, "Biometrics History," ed. National Science and Technology Council..
215 Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Annual Report Fy 2008," ed. Department of
Defense (Washington, DC).
216 "Bima Website: History of Biometrics," biometrics.dod.mil.
214

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Center (BFC) was opened in West Virginia, serving both as a repository

for all captured biometrics as well as a testing ground for new
technologies and their integration into existing military information
technology infrastructure. In 2002, the DoD released a strategic plan
calling for the integration and institutionalization of biometric
technologies in meeting both the regular business of the military as well as
in the hands of the soldiers during battlefield operations. In the same year
the Biometric Automated Toolset (BATS), consisting of a laptop computer,
a fingerprint scanner and an iris scanner were first deployed for use by
combat troops.217
The year 2004 was a turning point for the use of biometrics by the
U.S. military. A suicide bombing in a mess tent in Mousul, Iraq made
starkly clear how important base access had become. A memo from Paul
Wolfowitz, then Deputy Secretary of Defense, demanded the
implementation of biometric technologies to bolster defenses against this
type of attack. At the same time, the BMO came under new leadership
under John Woodward, Jr., a RAND scholar and strong proponent of
biometric technologies. Under Woodwards tenure, the BMO expanded
the depth and scope of its work immensely, specifically changing its focus
from identity verification of U.S. military personnel to the tracking and

217

Ibid.

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identification of enemy forces. In 2004, a year after the United States and
its allies invaded Iraq, the DoD established the ABIS, its current biometric
database. Woodward recalled stiff opposition to the expansion of
biometrics onto the battlefield, that they were police work that wasted
precious resources. Through the support of sympathetic lawmakers and
the FBI, this dissent was overruled and the way was paved for the use of
biometrics as an offensive capability. 2004 Also saw the Department of
Homeland Security fully roll out its own biometric tracking system, USVISIT, which required all foreign nationals entering or leaving the country
be biometrically enrolled.218 Homeland Security Presidential Directive 11,
signed in 2004, mandated the coordination and standardization of
procedures to detect, identify, track, and interdict people and other
entities. The DoD also cites 2004 as the first successful match in the field,
in which the fingerprints of a detainee captured by a Naval Special Forces
unit were matched to an individual captured in 2003.219
In 2005, Woodward published an article in the Military Review
Journal calling for identity dominance, by which the military can
quickly distinguish friend from foe by linking an encountered
individual to their previous identities and potentially criminal/terrorist

218
219

Ibid.
Ibid.

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histories.220 In that year the US military established the Biometric

Identification System for Access (BISA), which utilizes smart cards and
biometric traits for access to military facilities by coalition forces, allies
and employees. At this point there were multiple active biometric
databases in Iraq- ABIS, BISA, the limited but regularly updated databases
deployed with the BATS, and the Iraqi Automated Fingerprint
Identification System (Iraqi AFIS) that was built off of Sadam Husseins
criminal files and was used to enable or deny employment by the Iraqi
government.221 A second tactical system, the Handheld Interagency
Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), was developed and deployed,
boasting greater portability (it looks much like a large camera) but a more
limited database. In April 2006, the BMO and BFC were combined into a
single entity, the Biometrics Task Force (BTF) under the command of the
Army Chief of Operations. In 2007, during the battle in Fallujah between
coalition and insurgent forces, the US Marines walled off the city and
John D. Woodward Jr., "Using Biometrics to Achieve Identity Dominance in the Global
War on Terror," Military Review, no. September/October.Identity dominance is a
particularly interesting phrase, for it implies that not only would the US be able to deny
its adversaries anonymity, it would also deny them access to the tools of identification. I
was told by Min Chong, a former member of the BMO and current CEO of Strategic
Operating Solutions, Inc.- a defense consulting firm specializing in biometric systemsthat this aspect of identity dominance is classified information, but that it is a factor of
the DoDs biometric projects. In other words, the military is actively adopting measures
to confound efforts at identification of particular military personnel or assets. It is
possible to see how this would be important for espionage or other intelligence gathering
activities. Yet the fact that the U.S. military is actively undermining shared systems of
identification is an ironic, if predictable, twist. Min Chong, December 1st, 2010.
221 John W. Velliquette JR., "The Role of Biometrics in the Counterinsurgency," in
Department of Defense Blogger Roundtable (Federal News Service, Inc).
220

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closed its roads, only allowing movement of those who had received a
badge- granted after biometric registry with BATS.222 Fallujah being an
active war zone meant that most non-combatants were told to evacuate
the city (to be registered upon re-entry). Those who remained were
viewed as combatants to be targeted.223 The use of biometrics in Fallujah
is seen as greatly successful, and helped bolster the case for expansion of
the technology across departments and contexts.
Biometric enrollments were also collected as part of employment
applications, checkpoint operations, and explicit biometric gathering
missions. The prison system was one of the more important sources of
biometric data because these entries were flagged as individuals to be
held under suspicion if caught at future dates. This appears at first glance
to be nonsensical, for if an individual is already incarcerated then the
ability to identify them outside of the prison system is redundant. As
Wired Magazine reported in June of 2007, however, 2/3rds of all Iraqis
detained were ultimately released- but only after being enrolled into
ABIS.224 Bing and Owen West claim in a 2007 New York Times op-ed that,
according to Pentagon records, more than 85 percent of the suspected
Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen detained are soon set free [t]he
Noah Shachtman, "Iraq Diary: Fallujah's Biometric Gates," Wired, August 31.
Mller, Security, Risk and the Biometric State : Governing Borders and Bodies, 11-115.
224 Noah Shachtman, "Two-Thirds of Iraq Suspects Let Go; Only 600 Sent to Govt," in
Danger Room Blog, ed. Noah Shachtman (Wired Magazine).
222
223

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troops call it catch and release.225 Whereas the Wests see detainee
releases as vastly excessive civil rights protections for detainees brought
on by the shameful abuses of Abu Ghraib, the term catch and release
compares human detainees to animals subjected to fishing and hunting.
This appraisal is made explicit by Thomas Barnett, a professor at the
Naval War College who advised the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
stating that the military engages in passive collection of Iraqi biometrics
because these guys will scatter over time when you have the
opportunity to tag them, you tag them before you release them to the
wild."226 In other words, mass arrests and neighborhood sweeps that
resulted in few actual convictions were quite productive despite
protestations by the Wests. By the end of 2007 ABIS contained over 1.5
million entries.
The Biometric Sharing Community of Interest was established in
2007 to coordinate the flow of biometric data between DoD agencies, and
was expanded to other governmental and multinational agencies in 2008.
Also in 2008, the DoD and the FBI began working together to develop a

Owen West; Bing West, "The Laptop Is Mightier Than the Sword " The New York Times,
June 15th.
226 Jim Krane, "U.S. Military Compiles Biometric Database on Iraqi Fighters, Saddam
Loyalists," Information Week, May 9th. It is probable from the context that Barnett means
collection of biometric data from all possible sources, not only from individuals who
have been shown to have ties to insurgent groups, and not the technical term passive
collection which refers to biometric technologies that do not require active participation
or even awareness of the individual being scanned.
225

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next generation database that would store cross-agency compatible, multimodal biometric data, including face, iris, and palm data. Utilizing data
gathered from the DoD, the DHS denied entry to a Known or Suspected
Terrorist using a false identity in 2008, the first public success of the
interagency exchange between the two agencies. 2009 heralded another
first for the DoD, as latent prints were matched from two separate IED
locations 15 months apart, a feat made possible only by the Next
Generation database.227
In May 2010, the Secretary of the Army signed Department of the
Army General Orders that re-designated and transformed the BTF into the
Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA), making it a permanent
organization with full funding and personnel authority. Its records are
technologically compatible with those of the FBI and, as of March 2011,
the DHS.228 It has also been reported that as of October 2008 at least 7,000
DNA samples were taken from Iraqi and Afghanistani detainees and
deposited into the Joint Federal Agencies Antiterrorism DNA Database,
with an additional 10,000 inbound.229

PR Newswire, "Fbi Announces Initial Operating Capability for Next Generation

Identification System," www.prnewswire.com.
228 Lisa Swan, "Biometrics and Forensics on the Edge; Resetting for Continued Success,"
in Biometrics and Forensics Summit; Biometrics Information Management Agency,
"Biometrics Information Management Agency Website," biometrics.dod.mil.
229 Noah Shachtman, "Detainees Fill Pentagon DNA Databank," in Danger Room Blog, ed.
Noah Shachtman (Wired Magazine).
227

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The DoDs development and deployment of biometric technologies

is part of a long tradition of what Foucault calls the boomerang effects
of colonization, wherein:
colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical
weapons, obviously transported European models to other
continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the
mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses,
institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial
models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the
West could practice something resembling colonization, or an
internal colonialism, on itself.230
Mobile, wireless biometrics are merely one slice of a range of technologies
and policies that are being brought back from the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, but it is one whose impact can already be seen.231 It might actually
be more accurate to call this a boomerang cycle, for the technological
developments and insights of the FBI, DHS, the State Department and
even local police units have been invaluable for the deployment of
biometrics by the military. In fact, the DoD is not at the forefront of
utilizing biometric technology and databases- that honor remains the
FBIs, whose $1 billion contract with Lockheed Martin to develop a Next
Generation Identification System (NGIS), a massive multi-modal database,

Foucault et al., Society Must Be Defended : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1975-76., via
Stephen Graham, Cities under Siege : The New Military Urbanism (London ; New York:
Verso), xvii.
231 Dana Priest; William M. Arkin, "Top Secret America: Monitoring America," The
Washington Post; Spencer Ackerman, "Your Local Cops Now Use Iraqs Iris Scanners," in
Danger Room Blog, ed. Noah Shachtman (Wired Magazine).
230

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has reached initial operating capability in 2011232 For example, Wireds

Danger Room Blog trumpeted in 2010 that In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S.
troops use handheld devices to take iris scans and thumb prints off of
detainees and put them in vast databases to distinguish insurgents from
civilians Now your local cops are getting in on the action- but already
in the early 1980s a prototype mobile biometric device lovingly
nicknamed the dustbuster was commissioned by the Minnesota Police
Department.233
The DoD has been able to contribute significant amounts of
funding for the mass production of units, driving down prices and
spurring rapid innovation focused on portability and durability. These
technologies circulate through trade shows, academic conferences, official
working groups (such as the Biometrics Consortium), and personnel
exchanges between the various organizations in a manner that blurs the
border between technological systems of occupation and technological
systems of domestic security.

PR Newswire, "Fbi Announces Initial Operating Capability for Next Generation

Identification System."
233 Ackerman, "Your Local Cops Now Use Iraqs Iris Scanners." Christopher Miles, with
DHS, was kind enough to let me play a little with the dustbuster, that was designed
after a prototype built by the FBI. It really could be mistaken for a mini vacuum cleaner.
This model acted solely as a storage device that had to be downloaded and matched
remotely, and had minimal storage capacity, Woodward, Orlans, and Higgins,
Biometrics.. Nonetheless, it was seen as a successful tool and was even used by the Coast
Guard to mitigate human trafficking into Puerto Rico, Christopher Miles, November 3rd,
2010.
232

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The flow of these technologies is bolstered not only by economies

of scale and Presidential directives ordering cooperation, but also by a
larger merger of techniques, technologies and goals between the agencies
tasked with security and dealing with national others, i.e. criminals,
immigrants, and the subjects of military occupation. While many have
already quite convincingly made the argument for the militarization of
domestic policing and border control,234 I argue that the military has seen
the policification of its duties, objectives, and tactics. In other words,
policing and warfare are actively converging rather than just the police
becoming militarized. It is a state of affairs easily recognizable in the
organizational liminality of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.
The tension between the functions of policing and warfighting, and
the growing speciousness of the dichotomy it represents, was prominent
in the 2004 Presidential campaign in the United States when Senator John
Kerry argued that terrorism is a matter of law enforcement, a position
that President George Bushs campaign derided as a pre-9/11 view of the
world that did not understand the threat and was not properly focused
on winning the war.235 Yet these differences were mainly semantic, as
in the second term of the Bush administration the military in Iraq took on
See: Graham, Cities under Siege : The New Military Urbanism.
"Bush Campaign to Base Ad on Kerry Terror Quote," CNN.com, October 11.
Somehow, U.S. abdication of its role as a superpower is never considered as included in
whatever it takes.
234
235

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the very tools of law enforcement, such as regular foot patrols (walking a
beat), mediating local disturbances, and tracking suspicious individuals
in order to build evidence for criminal prosecution (through forensics and
biometrics).236
Yet what is really at stake in the distinction between police action
and military action? Foucault provides a useful conceptual framework
for this in tracing the changing meaning of the term police from a form
of community or association governed by a public authority in the 15th
and 16th centuries into the calculation and technique that will make it
possible to establish a mobile, yet stable and controllable relationship
between the states internal order and the development of its forces in the
17th century.237 In other words, the term police changed from the
community itself- the polis- into the means by which the state regulates its
normal relationship with its subjects. Foucault then lists the objects of
the police as being the number of citizens, the necessities of life,
health, occupations, and the coexistence and circulation of men.
Policing is the art of managing life and the well-being of populations; it
is Biopolitics.238 While the use of the term biopolitics is rich and not
without its problems, for the purposes of this chapter I am using it to
Keith L. Shimko, The Iraq Wars and America's Military Revolution (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press); Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Bima Website:
History of Biometrics".
237 Foucault et al., Society Must Be Defended : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1975-76, 312.
238 Society Must Be Defended : Lectures at the Collge De France, 1975-76.
236

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mean quite simply the management towards life, i.e. the production of
conditions in which particular forms of living (e.g. law-abiding, civilian,
etc) are both possible and protected. The policification of the military
thus entails its increased concern for managing the lives and well-being
of its targets. This is of course not to say that such activities havent
always been a part of military action, or that moves towards
policification represent a fundamental change in the nature of war
rather than the characteristics of a particular conflict.239 Instead, what I
mean by the use of the term biopolitics (and policing) is a particular
discursive framework through which particular state actions are produced
or resisted.
In opposition to the biopolitical discourse, Military action as
implied by the Bush administrations focus on the particularities of the
threat of international terrorism and the need to do whatever it takes
to win the war on terror is rather what Achille Mbembe would call
necropolitics: the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and
who must die, which makes the murder of the enemy [the states]
primary and absolute objective.240 Hence the militarization of the
police entails an increased capacity for deadly violence and a tendency
See: Hew Strachan, Sibylle Scheipers, and Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the
Changing Character of War., The Changing Character of War (Oxford ; New York: Oxford
University Press).
240 Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics," Public Culture 12, no. 1: 11.
239

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towards confrontation. I am using the term necropolitics not to make an

ahistorical argument about the police and their tactics, but rather to
characterize an institutional discourse that sets itself apart from the realm
of biopolitics. In arguing that biometrics are police work and thus have
no place in the military, or that it is necessary to do whatever it takes to
win the war, necropolitical discourse works under the creeping
assumption of an absolute enemy, and produces actions of absolute force.
What is of interest to this discussion, however, is the intrusion of
biopolitics into the domain of necropolitics, wherein the annihilation of an
enemy is shouldered with the task of managing the life and well-being of
a population. This pull between the poles of biopolitics and necropolitics
is readily apparent in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although these
forms of politics are contradictory and politically divisive, they are not
mutually exclusive. In fact, both are tools of governmentality. Biopolitics
represented the deployment of these tools for the sustenance of life (which
includes letting die) and Necropolitics reflects the active pursuit of a
populations death by the same means, i.e. through the tools of regular
governance. The contradictions are institutionalized and designed into
the technological systems of warfare, as seen in the doctrinal debates
within the U.S. military at the turn of the millennium and its impact on the
development and deployment of biometric technologies by the DoD.

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Competing Doctrines
The offensive use of biometrics by the U.S. military has occurred
against the backdrop of two active counterinsurgency campaigns, in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and had its genesis in the smaller-scale operations in
Kosovo. The history of its development and deployment has been heavily
influenced by a broader context of competing military doctrines and
political struggles within the Pentagon.241 The internal conflict of the past
decade can be described as the clash between two discordant visions of
the future of warfare. The first vision is exemplified by the Revolution in
Military Affairs (RMA) as argued for by Admiral William Owens and at
times referred to as the Rumsfeld Doctrine after former Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld.242 RMA is characterized by an emphasis on
developing and deploying networked communication and satellite
technologies, along with small, mobile units of troops and a heavy
There is a good deal of debate within the military community over the role of
doctrine, and its actual importance to the conduct of war (see for example: Adam
Elkus, "Do Ideas Matter? A Clausewitzian Case Study," Small Wars Journal; Paul Johnston,
"Doctrine Is Not Enough: The Effect of Doctrine on the Behavior of Armies," Parameters
30.). Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International studies indicated that these
types of rhetorical paradigms shift every four to five years and that programs, tactics
and funding simply has to shoehorn itself into the changed rhetoric regardless of its
actual applicability. He cited identity dominance as one such rhetorical
embellishment. While I absolutely do not want to attribute a simple, deterministic
relationship between military doctrine and the development and deployment of
biometric technologies, shifts in rhetoric signal the relative political strength of particular
factions and philosophies within the Pentagon. This in turn affects funding priorities,
troop deployments and battle tactics.
242 William A. Owens and Edward Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press); Shimko, The Iraq Wars and America's Military Revolution.
241

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reliance on air strikes. The military envisioned by RMA would dominate

the battlefield through insurmountable technological superiority while at
the same time minimizing risk for its own troops. RMA is exemplified by
targeted Predator drone strikes, based on satellite imagery and reports
from clandestine intelligence units.
The second is articulated by the Counterinsurgency doctrine
(COIN) as outlined in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and
championed by General David Petraeus.243 Under COIN, the military
relies heavily on large troop deployments with deep penetration of the
occupied population, and an emphasis on activities more akin to policing
and governance than outright warfare. Although an old staple of
warfare, most modern counterinsurgency theory stems from reflections on
the battles that were fought throughout the Cold War and struggles for
colonial independence. Its revival was made famous during the surge
of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007 to quell the growing insurgency. A similar
strategy was aggressively deployed in southern Afghanistan in 2012.
There are readily apparent and subtler similarities and differences
between these doctrines. Both stand in direct opposition to the longUnited States. Dept. of the Army. and United States. Marine Corps., The U.S.
Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual : U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-24 :
Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5, University of Chicago Press ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press). See also: David Galula and John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency
Warfare : Theory and Practice, Psi Classics of the Counterinsurgency Era (Westport, CT:
Praeger Security International); David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency (Oxford ; New York:
Oxford University Press).
243

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dominant Cold War doctrine of deterrence through dominance of

conventional capacity (measured in terms of numbers and sophistication
of nuclear stockpiles, aircraft carriers, and tank battalions). While the
RMA points an eye towards conventional warfare, both it and COIN
assume that warfare of the future will be asymmetrical. In other words,
the US will be engaged in conflicts with enemies possessing vastly inferior
conventional capabilities. Both principles envision an enemy who wears
no uniform, blends into the population, and strikes from the shadows. As
such, intelligence gathering and the ability to clearly identify the hidden
enemy is key to both. Keith L. Shimko makes this similarity clear by
emphasizing the importance of the term situational awareness to RMA
proponents and the counterinsurgents. Whether this enemy is primarily
engaged through surgical strikes or sustained contact with the local
population has been the subject of fierce debate within the Pentagon over
the last ten years, with the current consensus heavily favoring COIN.244
The use of biometrics has subtly grown and shifted with doctrinal
changes. While initially a strong component of the future-tech that
would provide informational dominance over the enemy (for example
through facial recognition technology attached to drones), biometrics is
becoming a more mundane layer of security for entry to bases and the

244

Shimko, The Iraq Wars and America's Military Revolution, 185.

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management of local governance. This is not to say that biometrics does

not still hold a degree of technological shock-and-awe intended to
dissuade resistance (as will be discussed later), but that like the rest of the
technological fantasies of the RMA founders, the limitations of actual
infrastructure and the shifting realities on the ground has mutated and
altered perceptions about the potential for biometrics. This can be seen as
playing out in the shifting terminology from identity dominance to
identity management, in which the goal of hunting down bad guys is
tempered by the greater need to identify the soldiers, non-governmental
organization (NGO) personnel, and civilian population that need access to
bases, supplies, and assistance.
It is useful to look a bit closer at the COIN paradigm in order to
understand the burgeoning role of biometrics in the U.S. military.245 In
1965, French counterinsurgency theorist Bernard Fall wrote that a
government that is losing to an insurgency isnt being outfought, its being
outgoverned.246 David Kilkullen, counterinsurgency expert and an
advisor to General Petraeus, put this in even starker terms, stating that
counterinsurgency is essentially armed civil affairs or armed social

Ben Riley, Principal Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, made the
connection between counterinsurgency and biometrics explicitly during remarks at an
event on the development of Rapid DNA technology by the DoD, DHS and DOJ. Ben
Riley, "Opening Remarks," in U.S. Department of Defense Biometric and Forensic Technology
Forum (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies).
246 Quoted in Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 145.
245

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work.247 Put simply, the goal of the counterinsurgent is to create or

maintain the basics of state power. The counterinsurgent seeks to ensure
the security of the populace, provide civil services (such as mediation of
disputes and dispensation of justice), and guarantee the material and
social welfare of the populace. The goal of the insurgent is essentially the
same, but first, the insurgent must sufficiently destabilize the
counterinsurgents ability to maintain order before filling the power
vacuum. Because the insurgency/counterinsurgency tension is a battle of
governance, all institutions of governance are contested, often producing
rival aid agencies, court systems, and even marriages ceremonies. The
military during a counterinsurgency is thus transformed into a mini-state,
focused on policing, the state of local politics, and the meeting of civic and
social needs.
The need for identification in a counterinsurgency is therefore quite
urgent. David Galula, another mid-20th century French counterinsurgent,
argued: Control of the population begins obviously with a thorough
census Every inhabitant must be registered and given a foolproof
identity card.248 This serves the primary purpose of gaining basic
intelligence, and gives the counterinsurgent tools to begin separating
insurgents from the population, or to paraphrase Mao Tse-Tung, the fish
247
248

Counterinsurgency, 45.
Galula and Nagl, Counterinsurgency Warfare : Theory and Practice, 82.

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from the water. More importantly, however, a census is one of the

fundamental means of establishing the structures of modern, bureaucratic
governance. As argued by John Torpey, the reach of the state, in other
words, cannot exceed its grasp, or in other words, the state cannot
govern (for better or worse) individuals with whom it has no
relationship.249 The most rudimentary of means of the state to embrace
its citizens is to take a census, although the historical variations of what a
census collects and tabulates is indicative of both the states grasp and its
priorities.250 That identification is a form of contested governance during
an insurgency/counterinsurgency is evident in the fact that the Taliban
produce and distribute their own identity cards, as discovered by the U.S.
military in an abandoned base of operations in Afghanistan.251
Censuses have been the primary means through which states make
their citizens visible, and in the words of James C. Scott, legible, and are
by extension a staple of counterinsurgent warfare. The use of censuses by
occupation forces can be traced at least as far back as the Roman Empire
and were used extensively in the second half of the Vietnam War under

Torpey, The Invention of the Passport : Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, 244.
See, for example, James C. Scott, John Tehranian, and Jeremy Mathias, "The
Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family
Surname," Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, no. 1 (2002)., Gtz Aly et al., The
Nazi Census : Identification and Control in the Third Reich, Politics, History, and Social
Change (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).
251 Associated Press, "Marines Seize Taliban Hq, Ids, Photos," MSNBC.com,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35487636/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/.
249
250

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the auspices of Operation Phoenix, the ill-fated counterinsurgency

effort.252 Censuses by the U.S. military under COIN are perhaps the most
sophisticated efforts yet deployed, utilizing sociologists, linguists and
sociologists in Human Terrain Mapping teams, not without
controversy.253 The history of the use of identity cards in armed conflict,
as suggested by Galula, is somewhat murkier, and is most certainly a
modern phenomenon.254 A growing body of literature addresses the rise
and role of identification cards,255 and even their use in scenarios of
occupation and conflict.256 As argued by Tawil Souri in discussing the use
of ID cards by Israel to maintain surveillant control over Palestinians, ID
cards serve as a point of physical and tangible contact between
Palestinians and the state of Israel the [ID] card becomes the physical

Dale Andrade; James Willbanks, "Cords/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from

Vietnam for the Future," Military Review, no. March-April.
253 See, for example: Roberto J. Gonzlez, "Towards Mercenary Anthropology? The New
Us Army Counterinsurgency Manual Fm 324 and the Military-Anthropology Complex,"
Anthropology Today 23, no. 3; Sharon Weinberger, "Anthropology Assn Blasts Armys
Human Terrain," in Danger Room Blog, ed. Noah Shachtman (Wired Magazine); Jason
Motlagh, "Should Anthropologists Help Contain the Taliban?," Time, July 1st.
254 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the
entire Roman world. (Luke 2:1, NJB)- at the time, the entire Roman world was
primarily occupied territory. This is not to say that identification in a much larger sense
was absent from historical conflict, as mutilation, branding, tattooing, clothing and
naming practices were all utilized to locate and make legible dangerous populations.
255 Lyon, Identifying Citizens : Id Cards as Surveillance; Jane Caplan and John C. Torpey,
Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press).
256 Elia Zureik, David Lyon, and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Surveillance and Control in
Israel/Palestine : Population, Territory and Power, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern
Politics (New York, NY: Routledge).
252

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substance through which their relationship is mediated.257 In spaces of

conflict, just as in normalized states of bureaucratic governance,
identification cards are a necessary material substantiation of the
relationship between an individual and the state, and are one of the
primary means through which one can relate to or place demands upon
the other. Under an insurgency, these relationships are strained,
contested or even non-existent, and it is incumbent upon the
counterinsurgent to (re)establish the media through which it can embrace
the individuals under its purview. The lack of an adequate and
immediate census following the invasion of Iraq, with the enforced
dispersal of identification cards, was one of the sharper criticisms levied
by the disciples of COIN against Rumsfelds occupational tactics.258
The drive to separate the enemy from the populace is not unique to
COIN. Just War Theory, which has long theoretical roots, is largely
predicated on the protection of non-combatants, who must somehow be
identified as such. The role of biometrics in RMA (e.g. facial recognition
technology on drones) is indicative of the need for some degree of
population segregation even in the realm of the necropolitical. As argued
Helga Tawil-Souri, "Orange, Green, and Blue: Colour-Coded Paperwork for
Palestinian Population Control," in Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine : Population,
Territory and Power, ed. Elia Zureik, David Lyon, and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Routledge
Studies in Middle Eastern Politics (New York, NY: Routledge), 229.
258 Lionel Beehner, "Iraq: Three Years On," Council on Foreign Relations, March 10.. Bing
West, a former Marine and co-author of the New York Times op-ed cited earlier, stated
that the lack of a biometric ID card [is] the greatest technical failure of the Iraq war.
257

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by Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, war pursued by liberal governments

reflects their biopolitical drives.259 It is killing to make life live, or to be
more specific, killing as a part of the creation and protection of a particular
form of biohumanity. But the categorization of individuals between
those who may live and those who must die is in a counterinsurgency not
merely a means to an end, but rather the end-in-itself. It is the central
strategic goal. Identification on the scale and with the urgency of the
needs of a counterinsurgency is vastly greater than the mere creation of
watch-lists or forensics, it instead requires the registration and tracking of
all those who encounter the military across time and context. Ideally, it
would include the entire population.
The technological capabilities of biometrics were particularly useful
in this task. Biometrics are a black box technology that creates legibility
of the individual through traits that are not legible to themselves, and thus
not as easily mutable. More importantly, biometrics (as opposed to an ID
card) creates a database that can be centrally stored, networked, and
infinitely reproduced. This enables knowledge gained by individual
soldiers to collect and pass on knowledge that can be analyzed and
utilized both by the central command, but also by their compatriots in
other locals and long after the initial soldiers rotation is finished. As
Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War : Killing to Make Life Live, Global
Horizons (London ; New York: Routledge).
259

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knowledge of the local populace is key to the creation of the ideal

counterinsurgent, this centralized and replicable knowledge base helped
(theoretically) to ease the transition between deployments. Finally, the
forensic capabilities of fingerprints became a key tool in the fight against
improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, a use that Marine Corps Ltc.
Thomas Pratt called biometrics killer app.260
In short, counterinsurgency is war conducted through the tools of
modern governance, and modern governance requires the identification of
individual citizens because identification is the base unit of legibility of
the modern nation-state. This connection helps explain the introduction
of tools of domestic surveillance and control into the warzones of Iraq and
Afghanistan. A general convergence of goals and tactics between the
military and the police has been a necessary component of this dynamic,
which has included a greater degree of technological circulation rather
than a one-way transfer from foreign engagements to domestic controlthis is particularly visible in the development of battlefield biometrics.
Importantly for the recent counter-insurgency campaigns, biometric
technologies created an opportunity to centralize the knowledge captured
through interactions with the local populace. It could then be used as a
substitute for the local understanding needed by soldiers on the ground,

260

Ltc. Thomas Pratt, April 26th, 2011.

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which is otherwise routinely lost with each troop re-deployment. It is

important, however, to look at how the promise of biometric technologies
that helped drive their rapid deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan
preformed, and what that meant for their actual use and utility.

Red, Blue, and Gray

Biometric data is only as useful as the information attached to it. A
fingerprint without context is nothing but a smudge. This is not to say
that there have not been attempts to read biographical data into biometric
signifiers. Even fingerprints were thought at the turn of the 20th Century
to yield what Francis Galton dubbed the biological coat of arms, and
even today studies are being produced that link sexual preferences with
fingerprint patterns.261 Other biometric traits have an even greater
potential for storing biographic information. Faces and irises can be
construed to enable racial classification and there are several companies
built on the premise that a DNA sample can provide hidden genealogical,
health or psychological data, mostly for informational or entertainment
purposes).262

Galton, Fingerprints.
Alondra Nelson, "Bio Science: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the Pursuit of African
Ancestry," Social Studies of Science 38.
261
262

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Whether biometric traits themselves enable simple

verification/identification projects, or are harbingers for profiling has
been a point of often-contentious debate within the biometrics
community. Simon Cole has thoroughly documented the (very
successful) efforts of early fingerprinting experts to marginalize those who
would read biographies in the loops and whorls.263 Similarly, profiling
technology and processes often take pains to remove the individual from
the equation through anonymization and aggregation. If a characteristic
or trait is truly unique to the individual, then it is useless to the profile, as
it does not allow for categorization or prediction of other individuals. Put
simply, identification looks for unique traits among the masses, profiling
searches for the mass traits within the individual.
This distinction is vitally important for the privacy implications of
identification technologies because it establishes some degree of what
Helen Nissenbaum calls contextual integrity. Nissenbaum states that
the dichotomy of public and private are erroneous and counterproductive, and in observing the texture of peoples lives, we find them
not only crossing dichotomies, but moving about, into, and out of a

Early fingerprinting experts attempted to shore up their legitimacy in the court

system, yet in doing so they transformed their profession into one of technicians rather
than scientists. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal
Identification.
263

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plurality of distinct realms.264 The concern that people have when

discussing harms to their privacy is the proper flow of information within
and between these contexts. For example, you would not share the same
kinds of information with your doctor as you would with your employer,
even though you can be reasonably required to share information with
both that could be considered private. As Nissenbaum states, What
most people care most about is not simply restricting the flow of
information but ensuring that it flows appropriately.265 Universal
identification programs, and biometrics in particular, if not properly
configured, carry with them the potential to destroy the boundaries
between various contexts. Information that is attached to an identity in
one context can be accessed improperly by in another through the
common system. Yet these violations can only occur if biographic data is
attached to identifying data that can be cross-referenced over time and by
various organizations or agencies. This may seem mundane in a war
context, a first world problem, but it is in fact quite relevant. When the
criminal files created by Sadam Hussein are used as the basis for Iraqi
AFIS, or when information collected on a neighborhood sweep are used to

Helen Fay Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context : Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social
Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Law Books), 4.
265 Ibid.
264

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deny asylum status, the barriers between context of collection and context
of use can be matters of life or death.
The U.S. military is aware of privacy concerns and the most
extreme ramifications of biometrics misuse. The Report of the Defense
Science Board Task Force on Defense Biometrics, outlines various
methods of designing technologies such that they pose a lower or
greater privacy risk, e.g. whether or not a subject knows they are being
tracked. Despite the acknowledgement that biometrics can be designed
not to harm, but in fact to protect privacy, the authors conclude sadly,
but not unexpectedly, for most DoD applications of biometrics in support
of identity management, the more desirable characteristics involve a
greater risk of privacy invasiveness.266 Lt. Col. John W. Velliquette, Jr.
admitted that [ABIS] is also very sensitive, because essentially what it
becomes is a hit list if it gets in the wrong hands.267 Information collected
on U.S. soldiers is covered by the protections of the Privacy Act of 1974
and while there are restrictions in place on what type of data can be
collected from coalition partners and what can be done with it, there were
no such limitations placed on the information gathered from Iraqis and

Defense Science Board Task Force, "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on
Defense Biometrics," ed. Department of Defense (Washington, DC).
267 Velliquette JR., "The Role of Biometrics in the Counterinsurgency."
266

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Afghanistanis.268 The information that is attached to the biometric file of

an individual by the DoD is as comprehensive as possible. From a Call for
Contract in 2007 for the further development of the DoDs biometric
system, Iraqi citizens applying for employment with the Coalition or the
Iraqi government would have the following information attached to their
biometric dossier:269

Name: Surname, Family-Given (These data points shall be

separate fields during data entry, however, to be concatenated
to a single field for EFTS submission.)
DOB: Day Month Year or Day Month Year (Gregorian)
(Moslem)
Birth Place: City Provinces * Country (Pull down tables will
include Iraq, other ME countries, Coalition).
Blood Type
Tribes
Civil Affairs Number (mandatory with options for UNKNOWN
or NOT IRAQI)
Age, Weight, Eyes color, Skin color, Height, Hair color, Gender
Unique Transaction Number
Reason for Inquiry

Woodward, Orlans, and Higgins, Biometrics; US Central Command, "Concept of

Operations for Biometrics in the Us Central Command Aor (Draft)," ed. US Central
Command (Washington, DC). While the personal data of US soldiers is granted much
greater legal protections, their collection is no less compulsory, and in fact may be even
more intrusive. This is in line with Torpeys description of the correlation between the
states grasp and its penetration. For better or worse (arguably primarily for better), U.S.
soldiers are tightly grasped by the U.S. government and as such are deeply penetrated by
mediating documents and technologies, see Torpey, The Invention of the Passport :
Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State. The ability of U.S. forces to collect biometrics at
gunpoint has ceased, or at least become officially improper, following the reinstatement
of sovereignty to Iraq. There is now a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the Iraqi
government governing the collection and sharing of such data. As Afghanistan was
considered a sovereign country since soon after the expulsion of the Taliban, a bilateral
agreement has existed for almost the entirety of the occupation, thus greatly complicating
the collection of such data and at times causing a strain on U.S.-Afghanistani relations.
269 Joint Contracting Command- Iraq/Afghanistan, "Biometrics Id Development &
Services: Solicitation/Contract/Order for Commercial Items ", ed. Department of
Defense (Baghdad, Iraq: baghdadbuisnesscenter.org).
268

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Family Information:
Fathers Name, Civil Affairs Number
Mothers Name, Civil Affairs Number
Mothers Father Name, Civil Affairs Number
Spouses, Civil Affairs Number
Children, Civil Affairs Number
Brothers, Civil Affairs Number
Sisters, Civil Affairs Number

Almost all of these entry points have been incorporated into the biometric
enrollment systems with several open sections for more information. This
was explained in an interview as, if there is a chance to record the
information, why not take it? The BATS system also records date and
location of each encounter with an individual.270 As evidenced here, the
so-called empty identifiers: fingerprints, irises, and pictures, are quickly
filled with biographical and geographical data. Importantly, relational
data is also included such as tribal affiliation and the names and Civil
Affairs Numbers of all immediate family members. It was this relational
information that Lieutenant Colonel Velliquette was concerned could be
turned into a hit list, as political, religious, or ethnic affiliations are often
inferred through family names and tribal membership.271
Given these risks, why does the U.S. military collect so much
information? This question becomes even more acute when seen through

Defense Science Board Task Force, "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on
Defense Biometrics." Doesnt this have a date / location?
271This was the case in Rwanda, wherein familial relations often trumped official ethnic
classification. See: Longman, "Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Perception, and Genocide in
Rwanda."
270

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the lens of the limited military budget: the commander on the ground
must decide between buying a BATs system or more M16s. Even the
truncated description of the DoDs biometrics programs in this paper is
distilled further by the promotional materials, government reports, and
industry materials into a simple, underlying directive: finding the bad
guys (or, its corollary, separating the good guys from the bad guys).
While this description of the purposes of identification may seem an oversimplified caricature of a militaristic, Manichean (i.e. good vs. evil binary)
world-view, it is surprising how often the terms good guy and bad
guy come up in DoD materials and in conversations with individuals
working on these projects. 272 A fingerprint, however, does not grant this
type of insight into a persons essential character, be they good or bad.
What biometric data does, however, is enable the connection of disparate
events, locations and categories (a latent fingerprint at an IED site, a tribal
identity thought to be hostile, an age range) such that a profile of risk and
possibility of harm, past and future, can be created and maintained. These
profiles of risky identities create the visibility necessary for kinetic action.
They produce the targets of military action.

For example, the most recent BIMA Annual Report (2011) has a section titled
Watching for the Bad Guys, although the official terminology has recently started to
shift to separating friend from foe.
272

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Figure IV-2: BIMA graph showing spectrum from Blue to Red with a thin strip of Gray273

Figure IV-3: USCENTCOM Venn diagram showing that the majority are gray274

273

Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Annual Report Fy 2010," ed. Department of

Defense (Washington, DC).
274
US Central Command, "Concept of Operations for Biometrics in the Us Central Command
Aor," ed. US Central Command (Washington, DC).

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The technical terms for good guys and bad guys are blue
forces and red forces, with blue being clear allies and red being clear
enemies (see figures 2 & 3). The importance of blue force biometrics has
risen significantly since the inception of the DoD biometrics program, as
indicated by the transition in terminology from identity dominance to
identity management.275 In identity dominance, the focus is on
identifying, tracking and capturing enemy forces while denying the same
enemy the ability to do the same to U.S. assets. Identity management,
on the other hand, recognizes the need to both grant access and to detain,
to sustain life as well as to mete out death. It is an explicit recognition of
the biopolitical potential of biometric technologies, i.e. that biometrics can
be used just as much to managing populations as it is can to identify the
enemy. The shift from RMAs enemy-centric strategies of precision strikes
and remote war towards the population-centric approach of COIN during
the period of biometric expansion and institutionalization also helps to
explain the rise of the term identity management, wherein the day-today business of governance was of a higher priority than militarily
dominating an asymmetric foe. It should be noted that the use of
identity dominance is beginning to make a comeback, being described
prominently in BIMAs 2011 Annual report and 2012 promotional videoMyra Gray, "Director's Message," Biometric Scan April/May/June,
http://biometrics.dod.mil/Newsletter/issues/2010/Apr/index.htm.
275

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this can be seen as a subtle shifting of discourse now that the

counterinsurgency campaigns are being phased out and sole reliance on
airstrikes and Special Forces is becoming (again) more common.276
This is particularly evident in the inclusion of gray forces in
some of the documents produced by the military to describe the mission
of BIMA and its related agencies. Gray forces describes individuals or
entities whose relationship or motivations are unclear.277 As can be seen
in Figure 3, this includes NGOs, all local nationals, foreign politicians,
Third Country Nationals and local employees. U.S. Central Command
(USCENTCOM) is quite clear as well that the majority of [the entities
its personnel encounter] are gray.278 Indeed, the situation quickly
becomes less clear. For instance, since Major Nadil Malik Hasan, who
killed several fellow servicemen in 2009, was a member of both the U.S.
population and the military, does this not leave all members of these
groups suspect, or at least admittedly opaque? Similarly, are sources such
as Ahmed Chalabi (whose loyalties have shifted repeatedly throughout
the Iraq war) or the suicide bomber who gained access to a CIA outpost
after being actively cultivated by the same people he killed red, gray or
Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Annual Report Fy 2011; "Biometrics."
US Central Command, "Concept of Operations for Biometrics in the Us Central
Command Aor (Draft)." The same graphic was shown to me at BIMA as a regular part of
their outreach communications.
278 This was taken from a draft, for which one must of course be forgiving of editing
errors, yet the lack of a subject is begging for deconstruction. A majority of what is gray?
Even this is unknown.
276
277

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blue? Is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother to the Afghani President, who was,
before his death, a regular ally of coalition forces and a noted drug dealer
red because his illicit activities dominated his other connections and
history? In short, even while the military recognizes that gray is the
predominant color of the population, even its designations of red and blue
are just shades of gray and an individual can have multiple identities.
This reiterates the importance of visibility to recent U.S. military
doctrines. The U.S. military is confident that in conventional warfare, its
capabilities remain unrivaled. It currently accounts for 46% of worldwide
military expenditures, which is seven times more than its closest rival,
China.279 Yet the U.S. is faced with threats, both active and imagined, that
are asymmetrical, unconventional and coming from enemies that are
hidden, dispersed and embedded within the communities the military is
charged with protecting (both domestic and international). The rhetoric
that pervades discussions of biometric technologies is all about being able
to tell the good guys from the bad guys, yet in truth, the promise of
biometrics is to summon forth the blue and red forces from the unknown
mass of gray. Ideally, all individuals are easily categorized as friendly
as enemy, but this is impossible for many reasons. First, in a
counterinsurgency the population is neither friendly nor hostile, it is
Anup Shah, "World Military Spending,"
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending.
279

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instead the contested object over which the battles are fought. The
population backs the winning side, and the side that is legitimized
through public support wins. As such, red can switch to blue and back
depending on the tides of war. Amidst this fluctuation, the use of
biometrics is an intentional and active attempt by the U.S. military to fix
the identities of the population as being friendly. In order to conduct
daily business and to interact normally with Coalition forces an individual
must be registered and this registration is promoted as an act of tacit
support. Galula argues for placing responsibility for verifying and
updating the information gathered in a census on the population itself, in
turn forcing them to participate willy-nilly in the struggle [and] . . . .
contribute to turn[ing] the population against the insurgent.280 Second,
loyalties and motivations change and the counterinsurgents rely upon this
fact. Unlike the explicit necropolitics promoted by some in the early
stages of the War on Terror, counterinsurgency theorists argue that a war
is over not when all hostile forces are dead, but rather when they choose
to put down their arms.
The vast majority of the population remains gray because peoples
motivations are too complex to fit into a Manichean binary. To use Scotts
terminology, it is necessary for the rationalized purposes of the state to

280

Galula and Nagl, Counterinsurgency Warfare : Theory and Practice, 82.

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transform the social hieroglyph, i.e. the complexity of reality, into a

legible and administratively more convenient format.281 This occurs
through the rounding off of difference and ignoring divergences from
the norm in order to maintain the integrity of the system. Yet, the state is
well aware of its rounding errors, as is shown in the recognition that the
majority of [people] are gray.282 Biometric technologies are a response to
the gray fog of an unknown, complex population.
As a solution, however, biometrics are fraught with their own set of
problems. First, biometrics is vulnerable, as are all identification
technologies, to enrollment fraud, i.e. to individuals falsely representing
themselves when initially entered into a system. An individual entered
under a false identity will be able to pass as that individual upon all future
identity checks, and in fact has their false identity legitimized by their
enrollment in the system. Kamal Sadiq calls this the problem of
documentary citizenship, in which illegal immigrants gain access to
both symbolic and actual rights of citizenship in developing countries
through forged documents to a degree that calls into question the line
between immigrant and native.283 For example, a Bangladeshi immigrant
purchases a fake Indian birth certificate, which gains him access to an
Scott, Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed, 3.
282 Command, "Concept of Operations for Biometrics in the Us Central Command Aor."
283 Kamal Sadiq, Paper Citizens : How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing
Countries (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press).
281

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actual Indian passport, which if presented at a United States airport

would show no trace of the original fraud. If this passport were to contain
a biometric identifier that was enrolled at the time of issuance this would
do nothing but further embed the Bangladeshis Indian identity. The
potential for this problem is acutely evident in the case where an
individual was able to steal a lot of money from NATO forces by
presenting himself as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, a senior
member of the Taliban.284 The impostor was only exposed after several
rounds of negotiations, when a former member of the Taliban failed to
recognize him. After initially establishing himself as Mansour, no
biometric system would have challenged his identity. It was only by
calling into question his initial enrollment (through a source that predated it) that the truth was found.
The individuals operating biometric technologies also limit the
ultimate capabilities of those technologies. In June, 2009 Dr. Myra Gray,
then director of BIMA, implored U.S. troops to make sure that every
fingerprint, every iris scan is done correctly and precisely, or else the
potential of exposing our troops, as well as our families at home, is
greater our screenings to detect terrorists are only as good as the

Dexter; Gall Filkins, Carlotta, "Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor," New
York Times, November 22nd.
284

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databases we build.285 In this plea for attentiveness in the building of

files, Gray is taking part in a long history of managers pleading for greater
attentiveness on the part of their data-collectors. The need for, and more
importantly the lamentable inadequacy of, local clerks and sergeants to
carry out the duties of attention are a driving factor that has advanced
surveillance technologies since the invention of the modern passport
system in revolutionary France to state-of-the-art biometric processing
algorithms employed today.286 This automation of surveillance
technologies is part of an ongoing process of de-skilling labor, particularly
that of the police, as described in Chapter II. In this way, the use of
biometrics in Iraq and Afghanistan can be seen as an attempt to make up
for the inability of ground commanders to live up to the almost ridiculous
demands of COIN, especially given the finitude of any given
commanders deployment in a particular region.287 Yet, even in
centralizing and standardizing the knowledge built from each subsequent

Myra Gray, "Speech to Troops," (Biometrics Identity Management Agency).

Noiriel, "The Identification of the Citizen: The Birth of Republican Civil Status in
France," 30-31.
287 Kilkullen suggests that commanders be well versed in the local politics, geography,
tribal and community affairs of their given region such that they are able to determine
loyalties, pressure points, and actualizable goals- all within a 12-15 month time period.
This seems like a tall order even for a multi-year team of anthropologists. Kilcullen,
Counterinsurgency.
285
286

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deployment, commanders are dependent upon the reliability of the data

collected by all those who proceeded them, often with mixed results.288
Biometric technologies as a form of security are also fundamentally
vulnerable to what former Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff
called clean skins, i.e. individuals with no recorded history of
criminal acts or associations.289 While this rhetoric is quite evocative- it
entails a dirty body underneath that needs to be discovered, and further
implies that there exist individuals who have dirty skins but clean
bodies, i.e. innocent individuals with records that have been tainted by
association with violent acts- the problem to which it refers causes
biometrics (and indeed, all forms of idem-identification) to fall silent.
The development of biometrics by the DoD was itself not without
problems. Cross-agency sharing of data, even within DoD, is a challenge
technically as well as institutionally. In fact, while it appears that many of
the technical hurdles are finally being overcome (as mentioned earlier, it
was just in 2011 that ABIS became compatible with DHS files),
bureaucratic power struggles over ownership of data as well as differing
regulations over the sharing and use of individuals information continue
I was told of one bored soldier who had tired of the time and energy it took to register
Iraqis, and as such he found a shortcut by simply registering each with his own fingerprints
and iris scan. By the time his neglect was discovered, he had registered over a thousand
individuals with his biometrics. Each entry had to be carefully found and removed from
the database.
289 "Clean-Skin Terrorist," Time Magazine,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1609777,00.html.
288

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to present obstacles.290 In 2010, the National Research Council (NRC)

published what was characterized as a withering critique of biometric
technologies, stating that in spite of substantial effort, . . . there remain
unresolved questions about the effectiveness and management of systems
for biometric recognition and societal impact of their use."291 In particular,
the NRC report pointed to a need to recognize the probabilistic nature
of biometric technologies, and the need to temper any decisions based on
of their use with an awareness of the uncertainty associated with the
recognition.292 It also raised the concern that no biometric trait has been
proven to be extremely stable and distinctive across all groups.293 This
point is exacerbated by the fact that it is known that some traits are
particularly indistinctive among specific groups. For example,
fingerprints are hard to collect from manual laborers and are not stable in
children under the age of five. While it has been suggested that multimodal biometrics will help limit the problems caused by lack of a single

United States Government Accountability Office, "Dod Can Establish More Guidance
for Biometrics Collection and Explore Broader Data Sharing," (Washington, DC).
291 Whither Biometrics Committee National Research Council, "Biometric Recognition:
Challenges and Opportunities," ed. Joseph N. Pato; Lynette I. Millett; Ellen Messmer,
"Biometrics Report on Biometrics Raises Hard Questions, Ire," Networked World,
September 28th.
292 National Research Council, "Biometric Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities."
293 Ibid.
290

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modality, a study by Rodrigues, et al found that multi-modal systems are

just as, if not more, vulnerable to spoofing as single-mode biometrics.294
In a BIMA promotional video that otherwise extols the virtue of the
futuristic technologies that help the warfighter distinguish friend from
foe, Sgt. John Shroud states that [Biometrics] is similar to a home
security system; most people have the signs in out their yards they may
not have [the security system], but it does keep the enemy away.295 To be
clear, Sgt. Shroud is not comparing biometrics to the home security
system- he is comparing it to the sign. In other words, the power of
biometrics lies less in its actual capabilities and more in its perceived
capabilities. This surprising admission by Sgt. Shroud echoes William
Bogards description of the importance of the imaginary of surveillant
control, wherein the perception of a totality of surveillance influences
policies, development, and in the words of Kelly Gates, functions as a
form of social control regardless of actual capabilities.296 While Gates
makes a good point that the importance of the imaginary of surveillant
control should not preclude a study of the development of particular
Ricardo; Kamat Rodrigues, Niranjan; Govidaraju, Venu, "Evaluation of Biometrics
Spoofing in a Multimodal System," in Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems
(Arlington, VA: IEEE).
295 Biometrics Identity Management Agency, "Biometrics: Impacting the Warfighter and
Beyond."
296 William Bogard, The Simulation of Surveillance : Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies,
Cambridge Cultural Social Studies (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University
Press); Gates, Our Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of
Surveillance, 6.
294

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technologies and designs as sites of indeterminate political struggle, there

is nonetheless an important interplay between the constructed infallibility
of surveillant assemblages and their actual (in)capabilities.
The fantasy of biometrics, similar to Foucaults description of the
quarantined town in which each individual was assigned his true name,
his true place, his true body, his true disease, was simulated in
Fallujah and in other locations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet this level of
control is fleeting without immense expenditure of resources, and even
then many of the technical issues discussed above preclude its sustained
(if ever initially achieved) totality. As stated by Stephen Graham:
[T]echnological silver bullets often fall far from their target.
They fail to function, continually break down, do not deliver the
anticipated results, and do nothing to address the root causes of
feelings of insecurity the techno-dreams fail simply because the
technology breaks down or fails to mesh with a myriad of other
technologies or because operators are unable to deal with the
systems complexity.297
Yet, while Graham argues that this bars a global Panopticon, it is
precisely the Panopticon that provides the metaphor with which to
understand the gap between technological fantasy and reality. The
Panopticon, as described by Foucault, is structured such that there is only
one guard present, or not present at all. The prisoner may be watched at
all times, or not watched at all. The Panopticon is a totalizing system of

297

Graham, Cities under Siege : The New Military Urbanism, 146-47.

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surveillance only inasmuch as the prisoner assumes responsibility for

its control. It is a system of power with minimal resources, a sign that
may or may not have an alarm behind it.
This has a profound influence on the ultimate impacts of biometric
technologies. As stated earlier, biometrics were introduced in order to
centralize and stabilize knowledge about individuals encountered by the
U.S. military for use by soldiers who are expected by the dictates of
counterinsurgency to maintain a high degree of contextualized
information despite rotations, limited deployments and human
shortcomings. Yet the relationship between the soldier and the populace
is necessarily murky. It is advantageous to the insurgent to blend in as
much as possible into the populace, and to exploit any patterns or
behaviors that would enable them to do so. Soldiers are trained to follow
particular rules of engagement with the populace and to use technologies
like biometrics to help segregate the population at checkpoints, but they
must exercise discretion at each turn, looking for the insurgent who does
not register. As stated by a former checkpoint solider with the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF):
[T]he soldiers responsibility to interpret any given case as an
exception to the rule is part of the IDFs general strategy to undermine
its own patterns and regularities. The army doesnt want Palestinians
to be able to foresee what might get them through the checkpoint

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quickly and safely. The clear-headed judgment clause indirectly

prevents exploitable patterns of behavior from emerging.298
The military deploys tools of identification in order to clearly reify and
demarcate the population it is engaging so as to summon forth its
enemies. Yet, the way in which these demarcations are created must
remain shrouded and fluid. As such, even those individuals sympathetic
to the goals of the counterinsurgents cannot signal their allegiance. With
or without biometric technologies, each Iraqi is a possible suicide bomber,
each Afghanistani potentially Taliban.
Biometrics is a part of this destabilization of exploitable patterns.
While an ID card is at least partially legible to the individual, they are able
to check to see if their name, photo, or address matches those on the card,
a fingerprint or iris does not reveal its secrets without advanced
algorithms or technical experts. In addition to being practically unable to
separate themselves from their biometric traits, individuals are also
generally ignorant of what information they contain. This means that
each encounter with the U.S. military, regardless of guilt or previous
interactions, is tinged with uncertainty and suspicion. A blemished
record may guarantee a negative response from the American soldiers,
but a positive or spotless record does not protect one from harm. To move
from Gray to Red is easy, whereas moving from Gray to Blue is practically
298

Oded Na'aman, "The Checkpoint: Terror, Power and Cruelty," Boston Review.

167

impossible. This plays itself out each time a soldier must decide to let a
citizen pass or to detain her or him, and the introduction of biometric
technology merely adds an aura of technological legitimization to the
interaction.

Conclusion: The Persistent Fog

The U.S. military is reassessing its biometric programs with a focus
on slowly shifting back from red force identification to blue force
identity management. This is happening as the pendulum of asymmetric
warfare is shifting in favor of the proponents of air power and limited
ground forces, using the recently concluded war in Libya that ousted
General Muamar Gaddafi as a new paradigm. Having been established
and institutionalized, the red force programs are hardly disappearing,
and integration with the databases of the DHS and the new multi-modal
database of the FBI continues its slow but steady pace. Even in the special
forces-type operations integral to RMA type attacks, such as the Navy Seal
team execution of Osama Bin Laden, the technological wizardry of facial
recognition technology was touted as having played a crucial role. The
offensive use of biometrics by the military, while still in its infancy, is
likely to play a major role in future conflicts, despite domestic budgetary
concerns.

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The necessity of biometric technology, especially given its current

actual capabilities, is less an expression of absolute technical dominance,
and more of recognition by the U.S. military, the possessor of the largest
destructive power in history, of its own blindness and limitations.
Biometric technologies also signify the intrusion of biopolitics into the
realms of necropolitics, and while these strategies are two sides of the
same governmentality coin, they nonetheless sit uneasily with one
another. This conflict plays out in and through the uses and development
of technologies such as biometrics, with the focus being placed at times on
watch lists and mobility, at other times on employee management and
centralized control. Regardless of application, the gap between the
fantasies of a clearly demarcated population revealed through
technological omniscience and the persistent gray of the actual populace
allows for the legitimization of particular tactical decisions while denying
clear routes for locals to remove suspicion and gun muzzles from
themselves. Rather than drawing forth a true picture of the occupied
population, biometric technologies reproduce the heavy-handed
abstractions and simplifications of the occupiers.
The use of biometrics in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be seen as
an overcoding of the identities of these populations, or as akin to the
use of that tattoo in Auschwitz. Instead, it should be understood as an

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attempt to create a materialized link between the U.S. military and the
populations of the occupied countries through which life could be
maintained and managed (in part, through the death of those deemed a
threat to the particular political configuration of life worth protecting).
This project, like the counterinsurgency itself, was a governmental project
that was constantly undermined by the governments being supported
through its efforts. While it is touted as a success and an enduring
capability worthy of continued financial support, this is only due to its
marginal successes in capturing a (relatively) small number of insurgents,
most of whom had already been captured at one point or another.
Instead, the work that the biometrics program did in practice was help to
legitimize who should be kept, who should be let go, and who should be
shot on the spot for the troops on the ground, while keeping the outcome
of these decisions opaque and unknowable to the populace.

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CHAPTER V
CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION:
INDIAS BIOMETRICS PROGRAMS AND THE POWER OF THE
EXCEPTION
The logo effectively communicates the vision for Aadhaar. It represents a new
dawn of equal opportunity for each individual, a dawn that emerges from the
unique identity that the number guarantees for each individual The sun
symbolizes a promise that shines on all residents equally.
Aadhaar: Communicating to a Billion: An Awareness and
Communication Report
At stake in the duplication, that is, may be an intensification of the accusation of
untrustworthiness. Slum-dwellers are accused of cheating, of duplication, and are
assigned new numbers, a presumptive de-duplication. But each effort to deduplicate only intensifies the condition of duplication and the accusation.
Lawrence Cohen, Berkley Anthropologist
Introduction: Competing Platforms
Over the last five years, India has jumped to the forefront globally
in the application of biometric technology with its ambitious program to
more accurately account for its substantial and growing population.
Faced with governing more than 1.2 billion people, India has launched
two overlapping but separate efforts to biometrically catalog its entire
population: the Unique ID (UID) project299 of the Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI) and the National Population Register (NPR) of

299

The UID project is also called Aadhaar, which means foundation in Hindi.

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the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). These massive undertakings are

unprecedented both in scope and scale, and carry the potential of charting
new territory in the ability of governments to identify and track their
subjects.300
What drives the desire for universal identification, and of
identification by biometrics in particular, is the administrative fantasy that
such a feat is both possible and that its completion would fundamentally
improve the relationship between the state and its subjects, removing
countless barriers to successfully meeting state goals. In particular, it is
anticipated that biometric technologies will reduce the input and control
of human operators and clients, which in turn will minimize the
possibility for human error or intentional fraud. While the introduction of
biometrics may minimize the risk of misidentification, failure that is either
systematic or localized remains an ever-present concern.
The problems of identification, and the hopes for biometrics as a
solution to these challenges, are particularly visible in India. The UIDAI
has at the point of this writing already registered close to 200 million
individuals, with a goal to register 600 million by 2014.301 The NPR,

Many countries already look to India as inspiration for future identification projects,
including Nigeria and arguably the U.S. Raze Machan, "100 Million Nigerians to Be
Registered in New Biometrics Database," in Biometric Update; Tarun Wadhwa, "We Don't
Need a National Id Card," in Forbes Technology (Forbes.com).
301 Government of India Press Informaiton Bureau, "Aadhaar Enrolments Beyond 20
Crore," ed. Government of India Press Information Bureau.
300

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operated by the MHA through the Register General of India (RGI),

conducts its own process for capturing the biometrics of Indian citizens.
The two programs compete with one another and have had overlapping
or dissonant goals, which creates quite a bit of confusion amongst the
public and has intermittently put the future of one or both programs in
doubt. A truce has recently been called, in which both programs agree
to move forward only in those geographic regions wherein they are
currently active, share data, and realize the ultimate common goals of
universal coverage by both programs; this new cooperation is a significant
step towards achieving their unprecedented missions.302
Both programs claim their primary purpose is formalizing the
Indian Governments relationship with a greater number of poorer
citizens who lack identifying paperwork such as birth certificates or
passports. This social welfare purpose distinguishes them from most
other biometric and identification programs that focus on tracking
immigrants or criminals (although the NPR is grounded in and aspires to
this more traditional role). Aadhaar, in particular, is publicized by the
UIDAI as a method to reduce poverty and corruption. The connection
between these two goals, alleviating poverty and fighting corruption,
seems straightforward. Reports on the amount of leakage from social
Anubhuti Vishnoi, "Truce in Battle of Biometrics and Identity," The Indian Express,
January 28th, 2012.
302

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welfare programs vary, but it is universally acknowledged as a serious

problem and each rupee lost is taken from the hands of the most
impoverished.303 The connection is, however, simplistic; it assumes that
the most pressing form of leakage occurs at the level of identification
fraud, that the current welfare programs, if run properly, are sufficient to
address the needs of the poor, and that meaningful changes to the
structural power dynamics that lead to corruption and poverty can be
eradicated through the types of inclusion promised by the UID.
At 1.2 billion people, even the most powerful algorithms (the
UIDAI currently reports that it has 99.99% accuracy in matching when
two best fingers are used)304 result in thousands of misidentified
individuals. Prior to matching there are another estimated .01% (120,000
people) who, due to physical constraints such as worn fingerprints from
hard labor or missing limbs/eyes cannot be biometrically captured and
enrolled. They are literal exceptions. The UIDAI has processes in place to
deal with these problems, such as marking fingers or eyes as missing or
relying more on biographical information, but the arbitrariness and
303The

National Institute of Public Finance and Policy puts the percentage of leakage that
is caused only by those types of corruption that Aadhaar would address at 7-12% of the
subsidy National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, "A Cost-Benefit Analsys of
Aadhaar," (New Delhi: National Institute of Public Finance and Policy).. The World Bank
has estimated that only 41% of the food set aside for feeding the poor actually reaches
those households Mehul; MacAskill Srivastava, Andrew, "Poor in India Starve as
Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food," Bloomberg.com, August 8th, 2012.
304 Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI, "Role of Biometric Technology in
Aadhaar Enrollment," (New Dehli, India ).

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subjectivity in local bureaucratic decision-making that Aadhaar is being

deployed to correct remains. So long as doubt and mistrust remain the
fundamental drivers of identification programs, they will persist as tools
of exclusion rather than inclusion regardless of the philanthropic
intentions of their creators.
This chapter draws on the vast corpus of reports, policy papers,
marketing materials, and training documents produced by the UIDAI and
RGI on their respective biometrics programs. Numerous secondary
sources were also utilized, including news reports, third-party interviews,
conference proceedings, and resources produced by critics of the plans.
Interviews were conducted on-site in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore
with the Directors General and lead policy and technical staff of each
regional UIDAI office, as well as at the national headquarters with the
Chairman, Director General, and Chief Technical Architect. Further
interviews were held with members of the business community who were
identified as both current and possible partners with the UIDAIs planned
applications, as well as on-site at a homeless shelter and community
medical clinic that were actively integrating Aadhaar into their
activities.305
Unfortunately, part of the NPR being run by a more traditional bureaucracy includes
little willingness to talk openly with outsiders. The closest I got to an interview was a
phone call in which I was told to look at the website. I was told by my contacts at the
UIDAI that they often get the same level of openness.
305

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This chapter traces the underlying drives and tensions that are
shaping Indias biometric programs, and that will likely structure their
ultimate impact on the lives of those they target. First, I sketch out the
history of administrative identification in India and describe the genesis,
policies and pitfalls of the Aadhaar and NPR projects. I then examine in
detail the particular way in which these identification schemes imagine
their subjects and the benefits they offer, specifically on promises of
financial and social inclusion. The analytical focus is primarily on the
UIDAI, due to the novelty of the program in its goals and methods, as
well as its relative success. Through this analysis I illuminate the ways in
which the epistemological underpinnings of modern identification
systems ultimately limit their ability to benefit their intended audience.

Identity in India
Biometric technologies reaching their apex in India has a certain
poetry to it, for it was the necessities of British colonial rule of the
subcontinent that led to the first systematic use of fingerprints as an
administrative tool. A relatively sympathetic colonial official, William
Herschel, was faced with challenging task of adjudicating contract

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disputes between local farmers and their seed suppliers and landlords.306
Rather than simply side unequivocally with the colonists, Herschel
attempted to develop a means of verifying the validity of a contract
despite the illiteracy and what was generally felt by the British to be the
inherent mendacity of the local populace. While there is a degree of
controversy over whether Herschel was solely responsible for the idea of
the practice, he indisputably began using palm prints for the sealing of
contracts which could then be later compared should a dispute arise.307
Convinced of the efficacy of this practice, Herschel began collecting the
prints of locals, which later were invaluable to Francis Galton, the father
of fingerprinting- in both developing his classification scheme and
granting the practice scientific validity. It was again in India that
fingerprinting fully matured into a viable identification system, when
Edward Henry, another colonial official, further developed Galtons
nascent classification system, transforming it into a searchable indexing
technology.308
The politics of Colonialism of course complicate the already
muddied distinctions between civil administration and criminal

Chandak Sengoopta, Imprint of the Raj : How Fingerprinting Was Born in Colonial India
(London: Pan).
307 Ibid; Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification;
Beavan, Fingerprints : The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case That Launched
Forensic Science.
308 Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification.
306

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adjudication. The Henry system in India was primarily an answer to the

limitations of anthropometry to properly distinguish the features of the
Indian populace by English clerks.309 Both anthropometry and
fingerprinting, along with other forms of surveillance including actual
branding (Godna) were actively used to track criminal castes.310
Extending the logic of Gyan Prakeshs discussion of the introduction of
scientific rationality by the British to India, the development and
deployment of the techne of rationalized governance was stunted by the
conflicting drives of enlightenment and suppression, yet was
appropriated by the Indian elite into the cause of self-governance, which
has lead some to argue that there was more continuity than change
between the colonial and post-colonial governments.311 While this
argument is certainly controversial, it is undeniable that bureaucratic
governance, initiated by the British, remains a powerful force in Indian
society, to the point of being talked about as above or beyond the reach of
political sanction or influence.
David Lyons description of identification as necessitating social
sorting takes on even greater meaning when viewed in the context of

Ibid.
Anderson, "Godna: Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century."
311 Gyan Prakash, Another Reason : Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press).
309
310

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both pre- and post-Colonial India.312 Caste and religion were used by the
British to divide, make sense of, and exploit their colonial subjects,313 and
remain a driving factor of much of Indias current policies and politics.
Laura Dudley-Jenkins does an excellent job laying out the contested
politics of group identification in India, wherein attempts to eradicate
caste distinction meet resistance from those within lower castes due to the
creation of a positive identity politics as well as their desire to maintain
access to affirmative action policies.314 In other words, attempts to
alleviate the inequality among lower castes have necessitated the
identification of individuals in these groups, and due to these progressive
policies such group identification has become desirable and even
something worth fighting for.
This is all to say that while identification certainly leads to social
sorting, it is often the drives for social sorting that lead to identificationand that such policies are hardly novel in India, nor are they always
viewed negatively by those in lower social or economic classes. This is
further intensified by the Indias democratic and (arguably until recently)
socialist composition. Democracy necessitates the identification of

Lyon, Surveillance as Social Sorting : Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination.

Nicholas Dirks argues that castes are in fact a modern system brought about through
Colonial administration Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind : Colonialism and the Making of
Modern India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press).
314 Laura Dudley-Jenkins, Identity and Identification in India : Defining the Disadvantaged
(London ; New York: RoutledgeCurzon).
312
313

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individuals as citizens and potential voters. Offering social services

further necessitates an increasing level of distinctions between individuals
of varying economic needs so that public resources are targeted
appropriately. In other words, the Indian states political structure
requires a relatively close relationship between the government and its
populace. In this endeavor, it can be said that previous and current
administrations have both been wildly successful and woefully
inadequate.
Akhil Gupta specifically points to this contradiction by asking how
a state with an active population of voting poor is consistently unable to
meet their basic needs.315 Arguing that the neglect of its poorest citizenry
is a form of structural violence with regular harm on the level of a
natural disaster, Gupta states that the primary cause of the plight of the
poor and vulnerable is the systemic production of arbitrariness by the
bureaucratic apparatus. This is not to say that these bureaucrats are
indifferent to suffering, rather that there is in fact an intimate connection
between violence and care that is arbitrary in its consequences, and
that such arbitrariness is not itself arbitrary, rather, it is systematically
produced by the very mechanisms that are meant to ameliorate social

315

Gupta, Red Tape : Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India.

180

suffering.316 Imposing rationalized rules and procedures on the

managed chaos of actual day-to-day governance creates this arbitrariness.
In other words, when confronted with the messy realities that are cut
away by policy abstraction, individual bureaucrats must exercise
subjective judgment, which while at times benefiting individual citizens as
a whole undermines the uniformity and clarity, which the policies are put
in place to create.
As argued by Matthew Hull regarding the bureaucratic
government of neighboring Pakistan, paperwork creates the material
infrastructure that supports abstract classifications, laws, and
organizations.317 Following the insights of Ben Kafka, this demon of
writing confounds and complicates the projects of the state as much as it
facilitates them.318 This should come as no surprise to media scholars, for
while we may reject the absolutism of Marshall McLuhans famous
injunctive that the medium is the message, the structure and materiality
of communications media, a category under which paperwork most
certainly falls, affect and solidify social relationships as much as they are
produced by them.319

Red Tape : Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India, 24.

Hull, Government of Paper : The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan.
318 Kafka, "The Demon of Writing: Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror."
319 Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel, The Medium Is the Massage: An
Inventory of Effects (San Francisco, CA: HardWired). See, for excellent application of this
type of media-studies based discussion of paperwork Kafka, "The Demon of Writing:
316
317

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Identification is one of the fundamental forms of mediating the

relationship between the individual and the state. The Hindi name of the
UID program Aadhaar, or basis, foundation in English, is exemplary
of this. It should come as no surprise, then, that the creation of
identification regimes is deeply imbricated with the political negotiation
of the porous boundary between society and the state.320 It is at the
margins of society that the presence or absence of the state is felt most
heavily, and for whom the consequences are most dire. The stakes of
these programs is not merely a question of technocratic efficiency, but is
instead the formation of the relationship between the state and its most
vulnerable subjects, particularly in light of Partha Chatterjees suggestion
that the nations postcolonial reality perhaps bears less influence upon
the nature of Indian society and its politics than do the new conditions
under which global flows of capital, commodities, information and people
are now being regulated,321 i.e. that the politics of globalization has
eclipsed, or is at least as important to consider as the post-colonial legacy.

Paperwork, Public Safety, and the Reign of Terror; Tawil-Souri, "Orange, Green, and
Blue: Colour-Coded Paperwork for Palestinian Population Control; Gates, Our Biometric
Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance.
320 Joe Painter, "Prosaic Geographies of Stateness," Political Geography 25, no. 7.
321 Partha Chatterjee, "Democracy and Economic Transformation in India," Economic and
Political Weekly 43, no. 6., paraphrased in Philippa; Vira WIlliams, Bhaskar; Chopra,
Deepta, "Marginality, Agency and Power: Experiencing the State in Contemporary
India," Pacific Affairs 84, no. 1: 11.

182

The National Population Register and Aadhaar

India traces the impetus for its current drive for universal
identification to the 1999 Kargil war in which Pakistani and Kashmiri
militants infiltrated the Indian side of the border, were discovered, and
after a number of major battles expelled. In its 2000 report, the Kargil
Review Committee recommended that ID cards be issued to villagers in
border districts, which became codified into law with the passage of the
Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identification
Cards) Rules in 2003 and an amendment to the 1955 Citizen Rules. The
responsibility for the issuing universal IDs was placed in the hands of the
MHA, which is responsible for both the collection of census data and
domestic security. Called the NPR, and under the direct purview of the
RGI, the branch of the MHA that manages the census, the program did
not truly start collecting information on individuals until the 2011
census.322 Even then, while the initial plan was to utilize the massive
census apparatus to simultaneously biometrically register all citizens,
logistics and politics stood in the way. Instead, the NPR has been recently
limited to only certain border states (where UIDAI is not already active),
and is to be extended to the entire nation once the initial rollout has
proven successful. Importantly, the NPR was unable to set up a viable

322

National Population Register, "Faqs".

183

biometric database and collection mechanism, and has been forced to cede
this task to its rival agency, the UIDAI.323
The goal of the NPR is to build a database of all residents of India
linked to 14 pieces of biographical information as well as ten fingerprints,
scans of both irises and a picture. The biographical data included is as
follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

Name of Person
Relationship to head [of family]
Father's name
Mother's name
Spouse's name
Sex
Date of Birth
Marital Status
Place of Birth
Nationality as declared
Present address of usual residence
Duration of stay at present address
Permanent residential address
Occupation/ Activity
Educational qualification324

Note that many of these categories are more akin to demographic

questions that are typically found in the census than on ID cards, such as
occupation, marital status and educational qualification. Inclusion of such
categories that are subject to (frequent) change means that the NPR will
need constant upkeep and status adjustments. The mechanism to keep it

323
324

Vishnoi, "Truce in Battle of Biometrics and Identity."

National Population Register, "Faqs".

184

current, according to the official website, is still being formulated.325

Inclusion of the names of parents, spouse and in particular the
relationship to head places a focus on familial relationships, despite the
NPR being an individual registry. Registration for the NPR is mandatory,
and occurs at registration camps set up in each district for a given
period of time. Letters are sent out to households based on information
gathered during the census, and needs to be brought to the registrar.
After initial enrollment and biometric de-duplication through the UID, the
information is placed in a public forum where individuals can correct
errors on their own profile or challenge the veracity of the claims of
others.
It was the initial goal of the NPR, particularly through its statutory
framework, to issue smart ID cards called the Multipurpose National ID
Card to all residents over 18 years old, but at this point such a program is
merely in the proposal stage, likely due to financial concerns and the
rise of the UIDAI. The NPR has ambitions to be used to help in the better
targeting of the benefits and services under the Government
schemes/programmes (sic), but it is generally acknowledged that its
primary purpose, particularly in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist

325

Ibid.

185

bombings in 2008, is security focused.326 While there is currently no

formal connection between the two programs, critics are quick to point to
the parallel National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), also located in the
Home Ministry, that would attempt to combine the various federal, state
and local government databases into a single, analyzable database for
intelligence purposes, similar to the doomed Total Information Awareness
project in the U.S.327
The UIDAI has run a similar and interwoven, if separate, track.
The program began as a plan to create a Unique ID for BPL [Below
Poverty Line] Families as a joint program of the Department of
Information Technology and the Ministry of Communication and
Information Technology. To expand upon this project, and integrate it
with the NPR, in 2007 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh created an
Empowered Group of Ministers, which set up the UIDAI under the
Planning Commission and granted it executive authority. 328 In 2009, the
Prime Minister named Nandan Nilekani, billionaire founder and CEO of

Ibid.
See, for examples of such criticisms, Usha Ramanathan, "Implications of Registering,
Tracking, Profiling," The Hindu, April 4th, 2010; Gopal Krishna, "Is Uid Anti-People?- Part
7: Incarnation of New Geo-Stratigic Tools, Nctc, Natgrid, Uid, Rfid and Npr," Moneylife,
December 12th, 2012.. The UID is similarly implicated in such accusations. See, for more
on the TIA, Reg Whitaker, "A Faustian Bargain? America and the Dream of Total
Information Awareness," in The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, ed. Richard V.
Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
328 Standing Committee on Finance, "The National Identification Authority of India Bill,
2010," ed. Fifteenth Lok Sabha Ministry of Planning (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat),
9-11.
326
327

186

the software company Infosys, to the cabinet level Chairmanship of the

UDIAI. While relatively new to the public sector, Nilekani was already a
highly visible public figure at the time of his appointment, often
compared in stature to Bill Gates.329 He has been credited with the
concept of the flattening world economy popularized by New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman. His 2009 book, Imagining India: The Idea of a
Renewed Nation, set forth a vision for the future of India that addressed
issues ranging from education reform to environmental policy.330
Unsurprisingly given his subsequent posting, Nilekani championed new
national identification management, stating that [a]n IT-enabled,
accessible national I.D. system would be nothing less than revolutionary
in how we distribute state benefits and welfare handouts; I believe it
would transform our politics.331 As Chairman, Nilekani is the public face
of the UIDAI, and is considered the primary driver of the program in its
conceptualization and implementation, a characterization that he himself
has at various times has embraced or disclaimed.332
Upon being appointed, Nilekani gathered a group of
businesspeople and engineers, primarily from the information technology
Dan Roberts, "Nandan Nilekani: The 'Bill Gates of Bangalore' with a Social Conscience
to Match," The Guardian, April 23rd, 2009.
330 Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India : The Idea of a Renewed Nation, 1st American ed. (New
York: Penguin Press).
331 Imagining India : The Idea of a Renewed Nation, 1st American ed. (New York: Penguin
Press), 356.
332 Ian Parker, "The I.D. Man," The New Yorker, October 3rd, 2011.
329

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sector, to develop and begin implementation of the UID scheme.

Circumventing the typical bureaucratic structure and strictures of the
Indian government, the initial UIDAI team worked as temporary, paid
volunteers out of offices in a hotel in Delhi, like a startup technology
company. Similar to such a company, and in direct contrast to the
implementation of the NPR, much of the work of the UIDAI was and
continues to be, outsourced to private companies, including enrollment
and the biometric de-duplication of entries.333 Currently, the volunteers
have all returned to the private sector and career civil servants have filled
most lead positions, but much of the startup inspired structure (and
arguably some of the ethos) remains.
The UID project aims to give a unique, randomly generated 12 digit
number to each Indian resident that is attached to four pieces of
biographical data (name, gender, birthday, and address) and the
individuals biometrics (photograph, ten fingerprints, and scans of both
irises). 334 Private contractors, NGOs, or other government agencies act as
registrars, collecting the pertinent data and checking the Proof of Identity
(POI) or Proof of Address (POA) documents. If there is not sufficient POI
or POA, specially designated individuals (often local politicians) or
UIDAI, "Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Enrollment."
For children, parents names are included, and if adequate identity or address
documentation is unavailable, the name and UID number of the introducer. "Uidai
Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India."
333
334

188

organizations (such as a humanitarian NGO) can act as introducers who

vouch for the individuals identity or residence. If one or more biometric
markers are missing or unusable, i.e. fingerprints worn through manual
labor or missing eyes, this is marked in the program as an exception and,
in more extreme cases, photographs of missing digits are taken. This
information is sent back to the UIDAI, which then sends the biometric
data to three private companies for de-duplication. If there is no previous
record that matches the biometric data, a new entry is created in the
Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) with a randomly generated
number, and a letter is sent to the individual declaring successful
enrollment and the official Aadhaar number.335 The letter contains a
detachable card with the individuals biographic data, picture and
Aadhaar number, although the UIDAI insists that this is not an ID card
but rather just for reference purposes.336
The next step is for the UID to become an authentication service, in
which requests are made by client organizations with an individuals
number and a given combination of biometric data to test for a match.
Authentication is to take place remotely, through online connection of the
client with the CIDR database. Another way of translating Aadhaar is
platform, and it is the computer science sense of the word that is
335
336

Ibid.
Pramod Varma, May 25th, 2012.

189

applicable. The UIDAI envisions Aadhaar as the basic platform on which

other programs are built, configured, and executed. Aadhaar has already
been used for opening bank accounts, distributing subsidized petrol, and
in health records. Proposed functions include mobile phone registration,
housing applications, as a tool for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) among other
welfare schemes, and for private sector uses.337 Like a computer platform,
the UID will remain neutral in its uses, acting solely to authenticate the
identities attached to the Aadhaar number and remaining silent on how
the service can be used and by whom. Note, in the Figure V-1 below, that
it states that UIDAI information will not be accessible to public and
private agencies; this means that biometric and biographical data will not
be shared, but not how the number and authentication service can be used
and to what other information it can be tied.

Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI, "Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery,"

ed. Government of India Planning Commission (New Delhi).
337

190

Figure V-1: What Aadhaar Is and Isn't338

Registration of an Aadhaar number is ostensibly voluntary, but

several factors complicate this claim. It has been argued that making
Aadhaar a prerequisite of receiving benefits for social welfare programs
such as MNREGA or the Public Distribution System (PDS) makes the UID
mandatory, but only for the poor and vulnerable. In interviews,
representatives of the UIDAI admitted that mandatory registration with
the NPR, and the consequent registry for Aadhaar, makes Aadhaar de facto
compulsory in all states where the NPR is active (which, if all goes as
planned, will soon be the entire country).339 It is notable that both the UID
and the NPR evade the issue of citizenship, planning the universal
338
339

Ibid.
Samant Kakkar, May 20th, 2012.

191

registration of residents rather than only Indian nationals. The UID does
not even ask citizenship status. This is in a large part due to the fluid
nature of citizenship in developing countries such as India, and a concern
that the linking of an Aadhaar number to what Kamal Sadiq calls paper
citizens may solidify the status of fraudulent individuals, undermining
the credibility of the enterprise.340 Even the NPR hedges on this question,
entering nationality as declared rather than as verified and legitimized
by the state, although its goal is to eventually create a sub-database that
contains only citizens.341
Unlike most national ID programs, the UID has been explicitly
focused on the poor and marginalized populations, those who live in
Indias social, political and economic periphery.342 The 2012 UIDAI
concept paper on Social Inclusion and Aadhaar states that Inclusion of
the vulnerable groups [is] the summum bonum and metaphorically
speaking, the heart and soul of the Aadhaar project.343 The project, they
state, is to grant recognition and ease the barriers to inclusion for the
poor, and in doing so create real economic value for residents, the
government, and the private sector. While the representatives I

Sadiq, Paper Citizens : How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries.
National Population Register, "Faqs".
342 UIDAI, "Uidai Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every
Resident in India," 6.
343 "Social Inclusion and Aadhaar: Introduction & Concept Paper," ed. Government of
India Planning Commission (New Delhi), 3.
340
341

192

interviewed allowed that with policies change in a democratic society

CIDR could be used for security purposes,344 the application that has been
given the most focus (and resources) has been financial inclusion.
Financial Inclusion in this context is the process through which
individuals are enabled through Aadhaar to register for a bank account;
introduction to a bank is one of the options during Aadhaar registration,
and the banks are currently subsidized for each resident given a bank
account in this manner. A recent study of enrollment has validated the
UIDAIs claims that the poor and marginalized are its target demographic,
as 56% of the enrollees as of July 2011 did not previously possess
portable (read: transferable from state to state) identification, and 87%
had incomes lower than $2,000 per year.345
Yet a significant portion of the real economic value to be gained
is in the detection and eradication of fraud and corruption. A cost-benefit
analysis of the Aadhaar project conducted by the National Institute of
Public Finance and Policy found that, even when not counting intangible
benefits such as labor mobility, demand-side empowerment, and the
impact on inclusion, savings to the state through reduction in leakages

It should be noted, that while Nilekani said in his interview with me that the UID is
unique in its being an authentication (1:1) rather than identification database (1:N),
deduplication- upon which the integrity of the database is founded- is an identification
(1:N) task. Nandan Nilekani, May 29th, 2012.
345 Amol Sharma, "Study Shows Uinque Id's Reach to India's Poor," The Wall Street
Journal, April 24.
344

193

and efficiency improvements would cause the Aadhaar project to have

an internal rate of return of 52.85%, meaning that for every 100 Rs spent
by the UIDAI the Indian government would recoup 152.85 Rs.346 While
this is argued to be an equally pro-poor goal, for money leaked is money
not spent on those who need it, fixed identification removes forms of
flexibility and avenues of negotiation available to the subaltern classes. In
other words, the UIDAI is helping to free funds from corruption for actual
goods and services for the poor, but at the same time is making survival
strategies of the poor more difficult; informal economies, housing, and
mobility exists in a gray area of governance, and fixed identity is an
assault of governmentality on what Partha Chatterjee calls the politics of
the governed.347
As alluded to earlier, the parallel NPR effort complicates and
subverts many of the benevolent and groundbreaking claims of the
UIDAI. In December of 2011, the future of the UID seemed in question as
a scathing review from the Parliamentary Finance Committee in rejecting
a bill that would have given statutory legitimacy to the program, states
that the UID scheme has been conceptualized with no clarity of purpose
and leaving many things to be sorted out during the course of its

National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, "A Cost-Benefit Analsys of Aadhaar."
Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed : Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the
World.
346
347

194

implementation; and is being implemented in a directionless way with a

lot of confusion, and that barring further legal grounding is unethical
and violative of Parliaments prerogatives.348 Some of the problems
raised by the Finance Committee include security concerns (particularly
related to illegal immigration), privacy issues, and the overlap between it
and the legally mandated NPR.
The March compromise between the UIDAI and the RGI dividing
the country between the two programs won Aadhaar funding to register
400 million new enrollees and the blessing to move forward with
applications, despite the concerns raised only months before.349 In fact, in
June of 2012, P. Chidambaram, former head of the Home Ministry and
RGI (but, to further confuse aspects, now in charge of the Finance Ministry
and in effect the UIDAI) complained that the UIDAI is objecting to the
conduct of the NPR camps in certain states and is also refusing to accept
the biometric data of NPR for de-duplication and generation of (the)
Aadhaar numbers, for all intents and purposes bringing NPR enrollment
to a standstill.350 While it is not clear what the outcome of the continued
turf battle between the two agencies will ultimately be, their rivalry (as
well as the proliferation of state and local level identity databases)
Standing Committee on Finance, "The National Identification Authority of India Bill,
2010."
349 Press Informaiton Bureau, "Aadhaar Enrolments Beyond 20 Crore."
350 Sahil Makkar, "Npr Likely to Be Delayed," Live Mint & The Wall Street Journal, August
7th, 2012.
348

195

presents a fundamental challenge to the goals of simplification and

streamlining of services that either may offer.351 As noted by Lawrence
Cohen, attempts to de-duplicate the populace have led to never-ending
iterations of databases and digital doubles.352
Nor has rollout of enrollment been entirely smooth. While deduplication was initially hoped to only take up to two months per entry,
the initial phase saw wait times of up to a year. In addition to putting
significant pressure on the registrars (who are only paid for each
successfully de-duplicated enrollment), this delay helped fuel the
concerns of the Finance Committee and other critics as to the technological
feasibility of the program and has added to confusion in the public.
Further, abuse of the biometric exception clause, which allows for the
registration of individuals without readable biometrics, led to the arrest of
7 private registration employees in July 2012 in Hyderabad353 and the
cancellation of 384,000 of the 410,000 fraudulent enrollments in December
of the same year.354
The most important question, which is currently playing itself out,
is how the implementation of these programs will affect and restructure
Frances Zelazny, "The Evolution of India's Uid Program: Lessons Learned and
Implications for Other Developing Countries," in CGD Policy Paper (Washington, DC:
Center for Global Development), 30.
352 Lawrence Cohen, "The Big One," in followuidai, ed. Lawrence Cohen (Berkely, CA).
353 Manesh Buddi, "Seven Booked in Aadhaar Fraud," The Times of India, June 17, 2012.
354 Chetan Chuauhan, "Uidai Cancels 3.84 Lakh Fake Aadhaar Numbers," Hindustan
Times, December 25th, 2012.
351

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the relationship between the subaltern and the state, although there is
enough information to make safe speculations. The UID argues that
Aadhaars benefits for the marginalized residents of India fall into two
overlapping categories: economic (financial inclusion, access to benefits,
fighting corruption) and political (social inclusion, official recognition). It
is through this lens that it is possible to understand the intended and
possibly unintended effects, which I address in turn.

Radical Transformations: Flexible Fixed Subjectivities

It is not unfair to call the UID a thoroughly neoliberal project.355
Summed up by David Harvey, neoliberalism is a theory of political
economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be
advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills
within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets and free trade. Under neoliberalism, the
role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework

Swagato Sakar argues that the UID is not an orthodox neoliberal project, but I
believe that his definition of neoliberalism as being only a retreat of the state is much
too narrow, for as Wolin ably argues the provision of goods to the poor is not antithetical
to neoliberal policies. His description of a new bureaucratic moment in which the
executive branch is freed from democratic process and open to non-state (read: private)
providers, with an emphasis on efficiency and fluidity of labor is, I think, a good
description of neoliberal tactics. Swagato Sarkar, "The Unique Identity (Uid) Project and
the New 'Bureaucratic Moment' in India," QEH Working Paper Series- QEHWPS194;
Sheldon S. Wolin, The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, The
Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press).
355

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appropriate to such practices with policies characterized by

[d]eregulation, privatization, and withdrawal of the state from many
areas of social provision.356 Well cited examples of neoliberal regimes
and projects include the policies of the Reagan administration in the
United States and the Thatcher administration in the United Kingdom,
and the actions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in
South America during the 1990s.357
Nilekani champions neoliberal policies, stating in his magnum
opus We urgently need to make our labor markets more flexible,358 and
that change is felt even in the way workers are talked about today . . . the
turn of phrase used for our workers is not labor, but human capital.359
Nilekani further states [p]ro-people policy is not about overregulating
the economy; it is about freeing labor and entrepreneurs alike and limiting
the very real harassment they endure in the hands of municipal officials
and inspectors.360 This stance should not be surprising (and not only
because Thomas Friedman wrote the forward to his book), as Nilekani
made his fortune during the radical restructuring of the Indian economy
in the 1990s, and in the technology industry that could hardly have said

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University
Press), 2.
357 A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press), 2-3.
358 Nilekani, Imagining India : The Idea of a Renewed Nation, 308.
359 Imagining India : The Idea of a Renewed Nation, 306.
360 Imagining India : The Idea of a Renewed Nation, 311.
356

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to have existed prior, in large part (according to Nilekani) due to the

onerous and nonsensical regulations of the socialist state.
What does it mean, though, to call the UID neoliberal? Primarily, I
mean this descriptively: the structure and goals of the UIDAI track closely
with the ideals of the neoliberal project, broadly conceptualized. To
describe a project as neoliberal, particularly in an academic context, is a
pejorative, and as lamented by James Ferguson much work on it can be
summed up as stating neoliberalism is bad for poor and working people,
therefore we must oppose it.361 He instead urges the Left to go beyond
seeing in neoliberalism an evil essence or an automatic unity, and instead
learn to see a field of specific government techniques that can be
repurposed, and put to work in the service of political projects very
different from those usually associated with that word.362 Ferguson
specifically singles out direct payment schemes (specifically in South
Africa) as a positive neoliberal technique, allowing greater autonomy for
the poor in resource allocation, enabling the very informal economic
activities that the state cannot by definition fund, yet are the primary tool
by which the majority of the marginalized population supports itself.363 It

James Ferguson, "The Uses of Neoliberalism," Antipode 41, no. S1: 166.
"The Uses of Neoliberalism," Antipode 41, no. S1: 183.
363 Although it should be noted that the implementation of such programs in India are
not without controversy and resistance. See, for a nice summary of some of the pro and
con arguments Gardiner Harris, "India Amis to Keep Money for Poor out of Others'
Pockets," The New York Times.
361
362

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is important to take this argument seriously and not dismiss the UID out
of hand but to carefully consider what the implications of its neoliberal
techniques have on political possibilities.
In terms of structure the UIDAI is an exception within the
government, lacking a legal foundation and with most of its functions
privatized. It acts not as a regulatory agency, but as a means of providing
the basic infrastructure (technological and legal) for market activities, be
that the creation of standards allowing for competition and use of
multiple biometric firms and registrars or the opening of authentication
services to private interests for entrepreneurial purposes. This is in direct
contrast to the RGI, which solely employs members of the civil service,
enjoys statutory grounding, and is rigidly bureaucratic in its operations.
Cohen rightly points out that the Security apparatus, in the postmillennial United States is the sine qua non of the zone of exception as
opposed to formal law, becomes on the contrary the embodiment of
statute and law and territory [while the] financial liberalization apparatus
is set apart as the troubling extra-legal state of exception.364 This is
hardly unique to the battle over identification programs, as liberalization
of the Indian economy has spawned Special Economic Zones across the

Lawrence Cohen, ""So When Should We Set up Our Camps?": The Uid-Npr Entente
Has Trouble," in followuidai: Anthropological Inquiry into India's New Biometric Identification
Program, ed. Lawrence Cohen (Berkely, CA).
364

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country, producing bubbles of relaxed regulation and taxation for the

purposes of jumpstarting development.
The goals of the UIDAIs identification efforts similarly track with
the broadly described neoliberal project. The emphasis is national, rather
than state or local identification, and is geared toward improving the
mobility of the population for easier internal migration, allowing human
capital to flow smoother. In this, it is not entirely clear what role the UID
will play other than in providing a basic form of identification- just as in
the U.S., traveling to another state in India does not guarantee immediate
access to resources like a PDS Fair Price Shop (FPS), or voting rights. It is
also unclear how such identification could be used in the informal labor
economy, which is one of the primary reasons for internal migration. A
system of worker IDs could potentially lead to greater protections, but the
very same trend could just as easily cause a backlash among employers
who would simply ignore or circumvent the voluntary program.
The benefit that was most prominently touted by the state UID
offices I visited was increasing financial inclusion through Aadhaarenabled bank accounts. There was some discussion of social and financial
benefits to possessing a bank account: the ability to save without worrying
about theft or storage of cash, the possibility of money transfers across
geographic divides, and the social capital that supposedly comes with

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being a bank customer were all mentioned during interviews. However,

the primary driver of financial inclusion is the reformation of the Indian
welfare state. Specifically, the impetus of opening bank accounts for
Indias poor is due to a shift from the FPS system of welfare distribution to
a direct payment model. This means that instead of having a card (often
held by a household instead of an individual) that would grant access to
free or discounted goods at government regulated and supplied FPSs,
cash is distributed directly to the poor.365 Similar reforms of the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) would
involve salaries paid directly by the state rather than through the local
administrators.366 In order to bring the state into direct contact with the
individual and remove the middleman, individuals must hold a bank
account, which allows for easy, direct transfers, and the state must be
assured of verified and de-duplicated identity. Cash leaks easier than
grain and ghost workers haunt more machines than worksites. Thus,
while Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning
Commission stated, We have to rework the [welfare] system If we
simply introduce UID without re-engineering the system, it wouldn't

Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI, "Envisioning a Role for Aadhaar in

the Public Distribution System," (New Dehli: Planning Commission, Government of
India).
366 "Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery."
365

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work, the UID is seen as both a keystone and a catalyst for welfare
reform.367
This has led Ram Ramakumar to call the UID an intrusion plus
retreat, in which the state is simultaneously creating an intrusive
surveillance apparatus while retreating from its role as direct provider
and guarantor of social welfare.368 It is a shift from universalism to
targeting, and from direct provision to indirect provision.369 With
respect to the PDS system, this move is two-fold as the program serves not
only for poor consumers but is also part of a national food policy
involving procurement at set prices from peasant farmers (a policy that
itself has recently seen reform in the shape of futures-market middlemen).
In other words, the UID advances the neoliberal political agenda by
reorienting the relationship of the state with its marginalized population
from guaranteeing access to minimal goods and services to guaranteeing
minimal access to markets of goods and services.
Creating market access for the poor also creates access to the poor
by the markets. Called by Ananya Roy poverty capital, the poor are

367

Quoted in Ram Ramakumar, "Identity Concerns," Frontline, November 19- December

2.
Intrusion Plus Retreat: Questions on the Unique Id Proejct in India, ISRF Seminar Series
(London School of Economics), Presentation.
369 "Identity Concerns."
368

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seen as an as-yet unexploited base of consumerism.370 As argued by

Anant Maringanti:
An India that is hoping to maintain high rates of growth must of
necessity look for ways to expand domestic markets. And it would
appear that the populations hitherto considered the poor are
indeed merging as potential target markets. To borrow a felicitous
expression from the management expert C K Prahalad, the fortune
is at the bottom of the pyramid.371
Lawrence Cohen further suggests that in addition to expanding the
purchasing power of the poor, financial inclusion draws them into
systems of credit histories and risk management.372 The UIDAI is not shy
about this possibility, stating that combining Aadhaar with existing
banking industry initiatives allows us to potentially convert financial
inclusion from social obligation to viable business opportunity.373 This,
however, is taking a long view. Currently, banks are subsidized for
including the poor at the rate of 2% for each transaction, and even with
this incentive, I heard stories of people being refused bank accounts
despite being enrolled in Aadhaar.374 Furthermore, Siva Kumar of ITC
Limited stated that unless and until the UID can be used to facilitate large-

Ananya Roy, Poverty Capital : Microfinance and the Making of Development (New York:
Routledge).
371 Anant Maringanti, "Sovereign State and Mobile Subjects: Politics of the Uidai,"
Economic and Political Weekly XLIV, no. 46: 37.
372 Lawrence Cohen, ""1.2. Billion Credit Histories Will Be Available: Aadhaar and the
Reformation of the Masses," in followuidai: Anthropological Inquiry into India's New
Biometric Identification Program, ed. Lawrence Cohen (Berkely, CA).
373 UIDAI, "Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery."
374 S. Pajama, May 28, 2012.
370

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scale data mining, it is of limited use and interest to companies such as

his. While such a project is conceivable, it would require efforts on the
level of NATGRID to produce useable financial information and
consumer habits and the UID is unlikely to initiate this effort on its own
(regardless of its stance on such a database).375 Instead, UID-enabled
financial inclusion re-routes public funds from state and local
governmental administration to subsidizing private sector services. In
this, while the reconstruction of the marginalized individual as untapped
consumer/capital is an explicit promise of welfare reform, the more
mundane redistribution of government resources and functions from
public to private hands is the pressing motivation.376
As argued by Torin Monahan, there is a disciplinary dimension to
neoliberalism, whereby those who fail, or are otherwise unable to comply
with the now-pervasive market logics are excluded or criminalized.377
While the focus of the UID is directed towards neither national security
nor criminal justice, it is explicit in its punitive potential. Specifically, the
Aadhaar number is envisioned as a means to purge welfare programs of

Siva Kumar, May 23rd, 2012.

This is not to be taken as an accusation of grift- it is rather that the private sector is
seen by the UIDAI as both more capable and less prone to corruption. In fact, the
subsidies necessary to entice banks are argued to be evidence of the charitable nature of
the project- were the poor being exploited by the banks for profit they would be involved
without needing extra financial incentive. Of course it is hoped that eventually the
motive of profit potential will organically evolve and replace the state subsidy.
377 Monahan, Surveillance and Security : Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life, 2.
375
376

205

ghost workers and an enforcement mechanism in labor management. For

welfare schemes such as Petroleum subsidies, PDS, or MNREGA the core
effort is eradication of duplicates, be they multiple entries by the same
individual of their own identity, the creation of false identities by either
those in positions of authority or by individuals (ghost workers), or the
use of a real identity of another person to illicitly gain the benefits to
which they would be entitled (otherwise known as identity theft). In
MNREGA and the education sector the UID is seen as providing increased
surveillance of the workforce in attendance and time management,
preventing what has been called time theft (logging hours not worked)
or buddy punching (clocking in workers who are not present). It is
these types of fraud (and importantly, these types of fraud alone)378 that
the UID is being deployed to fight, fraud that exploits the tenuous link
between personas and bodies, between records and people. The battle
into which the UID is wading, and hopes to decisively win, is over
presence and the material repercussions of its epistemological uncertainty.
As such, the subjects imagined by the UID are flexible yet fixed,
fluid throughout databanks and labor markets, but singular and
immutable when grasped. The enforcement mechanism of this
A valid critique of the UID and NPR is that neither address greater sources of leakage,
i.e. along supply chains in the PDS and the procurement of materials in MNREGA
Ramakumar, "Identity Concerns; Nikhil Dey, "Tool of Exclusion," ibid., or underlying
causes of insecurity.
378

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disciplinary dimension is access to services and work. Several states

have initiated plans that will make the UID a prerequisite for social
welfare and even private pension funds.379 And while Cohen is correct to
point out that the UID positions itself as outside the system and thus able
to fight corruption stemming from duplication by the ruling class and by
the masses, it should be readily apparent that the onus of proof falls on
those being identified.380 The point made by Monahan is that it is those
who fail to comply with market logics that are excluded or criminalized.
This is echoed by Elida K. U. Jacobsen, who argues that the UID
assemblage simultaneously provides identity and produces forms of
separation between the deserving and the undeserving poor: in the logic
of the system, those who are unidentifiable or who refuse to be
fingerprinted will ultimately not qualify for welfare support.381
This argument follows a well-worn track in the critical study of
biometric programs, which tends to focus on the populations that are not
correctly read due to technical errors, statistical variance, physiology or
social norms that hinder participation.382 Yet most biometric programs,

Prasad Nichenametia, "Don't Make Pf Hinge on Aadhaar: Trade Unions," Hidustan

Times, January 24th, 2013.
380 Cohen, "The Big One."
381 Elida K. U. Jacobsen, "Unique Identification: Inclusion and Surveillance in the Indian
Biometric Assemblage," Security Dialogue 43, no. 457: 467.
382 See, for example, Gates, Our Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the
Culture of Surveillance; Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of
Identity; Pugliese, Biometrics : Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics.. I have also made similar
379

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the UID and NPR included, have procedures in place to deal with these
very populations, called exception processing. Typically these are
secondary procedures that allow for enrollment with more traditional
forms of identification and authentication with additional documentation.
With the UID, de-duplication is achieved through the biographic data
rendered, with the NPR through the public vetting of identities. And even
if the UID were made mandatory for all public programs, there is an
inevitable lag in coverage that would require alternative means of
identification. Thus, while biometric technologies have been argued to be
systematically biased against the inclusion of women, minorities, or the
working poor, the designers of the identity management programs of
which they are a part work to rectify this through backup policies (with, of
course, varying levels of vigor or success).
What this means in practice is that those who fail to enroll in the
biometric database are not excluded, they are an excess that are not
representable but nonetheless present in and part of the database. Those
whose fingerprints are too worn from manual labor and eyes clouded by
disease are inconvenienced, certainly, but so long as they come to be

points in earlier chapters- one of the key lessons of the Auschwitz tattoo is that the only
thing worse than being identified in such schemes is to remain unidentified.

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registered they can gain access to an Aadhaar number.383 Slightly more

complicated are those who, for whatever reason cultural, political or
logistical, do not register. These individuals are included through legacy
identification processes that must remain in some form so long as the
totality (or, as the UIDAI are fond of saying, a critical mass) is not
enrolled. Often, if reasons are cultural or religious in nature, longer-term
exceptions are carved out that require, of course, documentation,
categorization and identification. In other words, recognition of the
choice not to be identified by the state requires identification by the state
as such.
This is not to say that inclusion through exception does not have
significant consequences for the UID and its subjects. Regardless of its
mandate, Aadhaar will always be in a process of becoming, and will never
achieve totality. It already holds within itself the limits and excesses of its
capabilities. Each encounter with the program is pregnant with the
potential of failure. The existence of exceptions precludes the certainty of
claims made upon the system. This point is underscored by the space
exception processing creates for fraud, as evident in the recent purging of
illicitly assigned numbers in Hyderabad. This means that procuring an

Anecdotes are often told of individuals who were turned away due to unreadable
biometrics, but this is due to poor communication between the UID and private
registrars.
383

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Aadhaar number does not definitively prove ones identity, and it

certainly does not guarantee claims on the state.
Sheldon Wolin calls this an aura of legitimated arbitrariness,384
wherein bureaucracy introduces uncertainty into the constitution of its
classifications and then disguises that initial move with an overlay of
procedural rules.385 The UID is an example of such procedural rules,
which are in place to help distinguish between Jacobsens deserving and
undeserving poor, yet in practice become a form of protracted
uncertainty disguised as procedural fairness.386 This is the same point
that Gupta makes about the structural violence of the arbitrary
bureaucracy, yet Wolin locates an important source of state power in the
volatility of the administration of the welfare state, arguing that it creates
a certain kind of flexible power and a certain kind of pliable citizen.387
The poor and marginalized must constantly deploy various tactics to keep
up with ever-changing social programs and their requirements, secure
only in the knowledge of the precariousness of their situation. And while
the UID and NPR were created to fight this type of uncertainty, the
inevitable failures embodied in exception processing procedures means

Wolin, The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, 159.
The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, 178.
386 The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, 159.
387 The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, 160.
384
385

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that each transaction is a possible rejection or setback that must be

negotiated.
The neoliberal bent of the UIDAI does not change this dynamic,
and if anything, amplifies it. The move is two-fold. First, the shift from
defined-benefit (i.e. health care, food, jobs) to defined-contribution (i.e.
cash transfers) support enables participation in the market but also opens
the poor to risks inherent in the variability of the market. As stated by
Wolin, the reassignment of social needs to the private sector reintroduces
precisely the elements of uncertainty that public guarantees of assistance
were supposed to ease.388 Second, while programs like the UIDAI tacitly
acknowledge and enable informal market activities, living conditions and
migration patterns, that the recognition must remain tacit means that the
position of the marginalized will continue to be tenuous and contingent.
Partha Chatterjee makes this point more generally, arguing that the
inability of the state to formally acknowledge the survival tactics of the
poor while simultaneously being responsible for their well-being makes
claims of people in political society [read: those outside civil society] a
matter of constant political negotiation and the results are never secure or
permanent Their entitlements, even when recognized, never quite

388

The Presence of the Past : Essays on the State and the Constitution, 174.

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become rights.389 The UID is a technique of establishing individual

relationships with Indian residents, but its impact will be the enforcement
of procedural rules of exclusion rather than the guarantee of rights that
remain contingent, arbitrary and mutable particularly in the face of the
rapid societal reorganization occurring through the logics of neoliberal
globalization.

Lighting Up the Darkness: Identification as Social Inclusion

In addition to the material benefits of possessing state-issued
identification, the UID has made loftier arguments that the Aadhaar
number will grant a form of social and political capital through official
recognition. As stated in their concept paper on Social Inclusion and
Aadhaar, An inability to prove identity can be a big barrier to accessing
public benefits and subsidies Concomitantly, the poor and marginalized are
denied the opportunity to lead a life of dignified existence [emphasis
originals].390 In an earlier chapter, I argued that identification can
number, name, or mark. The UIDAI is arguing that the Aadhaar number
does not merely create a registry of the individual over time, but also
marks them as beings of inherent dignity and pride. This Hegelian
construction of the relationship between the individual and the state
389
390

Chatterjee, "Democracy and Economic Transformation in India."

UIDAI, "Social Inclusion and Aadhaar: Introduction & Concept Paper," 20.

212

posits the marginalized as lacking these qualities in-and-of themselves,

and requiring external validation to be whole. And the source of this
recognition is the state, as can be seen in Figure 3-2 that features two
posters found in the UIDAI Technology Center in Bangalore.

Figure V-2: Posters from the UIDAI Technology Center in Bangalore, India

Over the picture of the young woman the first poster asks, Who
are you? stating immediately underneath We have the answer. The
second poster features a peasant laborer foregrounded with the statement
that India knows you: enroll now for the recognition. In each poster,
the individuals are being presented as not knowing who they are, and not
having the recognition they deserve. The state, through the UIDAI,
already possesses that which the individual lacks. It already has the

213

answer and knows you, but it cannot impart the knowledge and
recognition without the active enrollment of the subject.
The Awareness and Communication Strategy Advisory Council
(ACSAC) report Communicating to a Billion, emphasizes the social
benefits of the Aadhaar program as well. In discussing the Aadhaar logo,
which is a sun in red and yellow with a fingerprint at its center, the report
states that:
The idea of light within the logo also communicates an important
vision of the UIDAI- that Aadhaars uniqueness in identity
verification would allow governments to implement greater
transparency in welfare programs, bringing more light into the
delivery of services and resources. This idea of light can also be
used to communicate another core promise of Aadhaar- that with
this number, the poor will no longer be invisible to the state.
Aadhaar would throw light on, and recognize the existence of each
poor individual, by registering their identities with the
government.391
Whereas the report on Social Inclusion made the argument that it
was lack of access to public benefits and subsidies brought about by an
inability to prove identity that was keeping the marginalized from having
a dignified existence, the ACSAC report makes a subtly different point:
throwing light upon the poor and making them visible to the state
through individual registration is a core promise and end-in-itself on
par with the potential to bring greater transparency and efficiency to
Awareness and Communication Strategy Advisory Council ACSAC, "AadhaarCommunicating to a Billion: An Awareness and Communication Report," ed. Planning
Commission UIDAI, Indian Government (New Delhi), 60-61.
391

214

welfare programs. In other words, state identification is not simply a

bureaucratic tool to ensure the efficient distribution of public goods but is
rather a means to confer legitimacy and belonging.

Figure V-3: Select screenshots from Aadhaar: A Short Film by Carrot

Communications392

These themes are present in a short promotional film set to an

inspiring, Bollywood-esque song that extols the virtues of the Aadhaar
program.393 As shown in Figure V-3, the singer declares that Aadhaar will

392

Carrot Communications, "Short Film- Aadhaar," (youtube.com).

It is unclear who produced this film- its intro says that it is a film by Carrot
Communications, but the slick production values, repeated use of the official Aadhaar
logo, and the fact that some of the footage made its way into the power-point
presentations of regional UIDAI offices suggest that this was produced at the behest of,
and at the very least with full the full cooperation of, the UIDAI.
393

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make you ready to serve the nation while a young boy runs in front of
parliament (the next scene, under the same stanza, is of military personnel
in a battle), and that it will enable you to be treated with pride, with
respect while a man labors on the street, and lights up the dark for the
group of poor men. An oft-repeated line in the song is through Aadhaar it
is possible to build the foundation of the nation, and images of people
from Indias diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds are shown smiling
approvingly at the camera. Importantly, one of the last images is of a
group of what look like engineers or foremen overlooking a factory while
the singer encourages the viewer to come together and work together.
From a simple semiotic analysis of this video, it is possible to understand
that the UID is being sold as transformative process that takes the various
cultures, religions, classes and castes and makes of them a unified, proud
nation that can boldly stride into the industrialized future. In this, the
dignity and respect bestowed by registration is not simply that of the state
bureaucracy, but of belonging to and serving the greater whole. The
UIDAI is building and adding upon the imaginary of the cohesive nation,
brought together and more importantly, pulled out of the darkness, by the
dawning technis of the state assemblage.

216

Figure V-4: Part of an NPR promotional pamphlet394

The NPR, in contrast, states in its promotional leaflets that

registration is a right as well as a duty of every resident, and whose
slogan is My Identity My Pride.395 While the UIDAI also embraces the
discourse rights to sell its program,396 the ACSAC suggests that the UIDAI
be discussed as an opportunity not to be missed rather than a duty one
must preform.397 While this in part is due to the mandatory versus
voluntary nature of the two programs, it also speaks to a deeper
philosophical divide and the way in which both identity as a right and
the pride of an identity are understood. By placing identification within
394

Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, "National Population Register
Promotional Pamphlet," ed. Ministry of Home Affairs (Online).
395 Department of Information Technology National Population Register, "Advertisement,
English Version."
396 Other posters in the Bangalore Technical office stated, Identity is our right. For an
interesting discussion of the legal history of understanding identification as a right, see
Simon Szreter, "The Right of Registration: Development, Identity Registration, and Social
Security- a Historical Perspective," World Development 35, no. 1.
397 ACSAC, "Aadhaar- Communicating to a Billion: An Awareness and Communication
Report."

217

the discourse of rights and duties, the NPR is evoking the social contract
wherein citizens (or, in this case, residents) are entitled to certain rights
from the state but in doing so are obliged to participate in the society in
particular ways. In this way, the pride of identity can be read not as
something that is conferred through registration (being treated with pride
and respect, or to enroll for the recognition) but rather as something that
is asserted and claimed (My Identity, My Pride). This comparison is
useful not to validate the RGIs approach, but rather to highlight the
assertion of the UIDAI that Aadhaar in-and-of-itself grants dignity and
legitimacy for the marginalized parts of society that they would otherwise
lack. This claim is (to say the least) problematic, but more importantly it
points to a naivet about the role of identification in the survival strategies
of the poor and marginalized.
Interestingly, despite the sophistication of the ACSAC report, one
of the more poignant criticisms of the UIDAI is that they have not done an
adequate job marketing the program, instead relying upon the apparent
benefits of registering to drive demand. While this strategy may be
validated by the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence that registrars are often
overrun whenever they open and the more concrete metrics of the
successful first phase which saw 200 million enrollments, general
misperception and misinformation about the program is a pressing

218

concern for the regional offices.398 The specific aspect of the program that
is the subject of frequent confusion is that Aadhaar is a number not an ID
card. News articles often refer to the Aadhaar card, and one even
complained of the paper quality used to print the card,399 even though
the UIDAI takes great pains to point out whenever it can that it is not
issuing an ID card but rather sending a letter to inform residents of their
number. Pramod Varma, chief architect of the UIDs technical
infrastructure, recounted that one of the security guards of the Bangalore
Technical Center asked daily when he would get his card despite repeated
explanations and reminders that no such card would be forthcoming (just
a letter!).400
The stubborn misunderstanding of the security guard is indicative
of more than simple miscommunication or ignorance. What is at stake is
instead a politics of materiality, legibility, and control. One of the primary
goals of the UID is to centralize Indias identification infrastructure in a
way that leaves it impervious to manipulation by local actors. In order to
do so, it reads the bodies of its registrants, but in a way that is not
understandable to either them or the individual who is actively scanning
them. Authentication occurs inside the servers of the Aadhaar database,
UIDAI, "Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Enrollment."
M. Shrinavasa, "Poor Quality of Aadhaar Cards Huge Let-Down for Citizens," Deccan
Chronicle, July 7.
400 Varma.
398
399

219

protected and opaque to all but its engineers (and even to them it is kept
somewhat obscured). Even the Aadhaar number is meant to be
incomprehensible to all but the machine, its random generation a point of
pride.401 Identification that happens digitally and immaterially, and that
is built off of information that cannot be understood by its human
operators, is seen to be impossible to manipulate or misrepresent.
Yet it is this very materiality and legibility that an ID card grants
and that the security guard, and those like him, desires. A card with a
picture, a name, or other data can be seen and corrected, it can be
displayed or hidden; it is a material manifestation of the relationship
between the state and the individual that holds and controls. Perhaps the
career bureaucrats of the RGI, ensconced as they are in the materiality of
the paperwork that structures their lives, have a more intuitive grasp of
the importance of the ID card. This is not to say that ID cards are not
potentially oppressive, and the forced use of them not a burden, but rather
that the shift to centralized, digital identification is a clear restructuring of
power away from the individual. The importance of the letter to those
who have registered should be seen as a push for materiality and
legibility, and ultimately, for a means to negotiate and control what
happens with their identity.

401

Ibid.

220

This dynamic is clear as well in conversations regarding privacy. I

was told during an interview with a representative of a homelessadvocacy NGO that was working with the UIDAI [t]he way we
understand privacy in the Western World, is not what we understand
here We are talking about people who have nothing to live by; you
have people who live in pipes, people live on traffic islands, they will be
happy to share data if they are getting something from it.402 While the
sentiment being expressed is that the poor have no sense of privacy, the
more important point is that they are willing to share data if they are
getting something from it. This is underscored by a story told by Samant
Kakkar of the Delhi UIDAI office, who remembered one homeless man
during a registration effort telling him:
So you are collecting 4 pieces of information the people come
with the BPL [Below Poverty Line] form to determine if I am BPL
or not, and they ask me 14 questions, and very invasive questions,
and I am inclined to lie because if I tell them I have certain things
then I do not qualify as BPL, so why would I not answer four
questions that would get me an identity that is recognized by the
government?403
Again, this anecdote relayed to underscore that the poor are eager to
access and the benefits of Aadhaar, and are happily willing to answer
four questions. Yet the telling aspect of this quote is that the homeless
person lied to the civil servants trying to determine his BPL status, which
402
403

Sujata Chaturvedi, May 20th, 2012.

Kakkar.

221

indicates not a lack of concern for privacy but rather an acute sensitivity to
information sharing and its repercussions. As Maringanti astutely
observes, under the changes of globalization large numbers of the poor
will depend crucially for their survival on being able to choose tactically
when to become visible and be counted by the state and when not to be
counted by the state.404 It is unlikely that these individuals do not
understand the potential privacy harms. A recent survey indicated that
only 17% of Indians trust that personal information collected by the UID
and NATGRID projects will not be misused, but that they see it as a
potential tool for tactically visibility.405
It cannot be stressed enough that the UID does not guarantee rights
or access to public benefits, it merely removes a barrier to them. And so
long as the relationship between the individual and the state remains
contingent and arbitrary, programs like Aadhaar and the NPR will be sites
of contestation, negotiation, and politics despite the lofty goals to make
such tactics unnecessary and obsolete. Quoting Jacobsen, [t]he utopian
idea of an empty, valueless technological space that classifies each body
equally (on equal terms) through capturing body data into code is
instantly disrupted as the number itself only has a value, a significance,

Maringanti, "Sovereign State and Mobile Subjects: Politics of the Uidai," 38.
Ponnurangam; Sachdva Kumaraguru, Niharika, "Privacy in India: Attitudes and
Awareness V 2.0," (New Delhi, India: Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology).
404
405

222

when entering the heterogeneous sociopolitical and categorical space of its

utilization.406 In other words, the UIDAIs attempt to create an
immaterial, impartial medium of identity that will grant seamless access
to the social and economic spheres for marginalized populations will be
frustrated, complicated and entangled in the very struggles it hoped to
rise above as soon as it is deployed.
The collision of Aadhaar with political society will most likely
manifest itself in people trying to use their number (or, more likely, their
letter) to make claims on the state to which mere identification does not
entitle them, or in expectations of efficiency and transparency in the
distribution of public goods that are unrelated to the management of
identity. It may even be as simple as the demand that Aadhaar work as
promised, not as is possible given technical and policy limitations. When
this happens, it will not be due to a lack of a proper communications
strategy or to the ignorance of the populace, but rather because the UID
has become a tactical tool of the marginalized classes to demand for
themselves actual dignity and power that exceeds that granted by their
record in a database.

Jacobsen, "Unique Identification: Inclusion and Surveillance in the Indian Biometric

Assemblage," 468.
406

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Conclusion: Poverty Premiums

In a presentation on Aadhaar in 2010, Salil Prabhakar, one of the
original volunteers of the project who has since returned to private
industry, argued that one of the primary goals of the program was to
alleviate the poverty premium.407 The poverty premium, he said, was
the extra cost in time, energy, and cash that the poor spend to sustain
themselves that those with stable resources do not have to pay. Examples
that he gave were of check cashing and payday loan businesses that
charge for services that those with a bank account get for free. Although
she did not use the term poverty premium in her presentation, Deputy
Director General Sujata Chaturvedi of the UIDAI regional office in Delhi
told the story of Kumar, a peasant who had to journey two hours to get to
a bank and must pay interest to a local money lender to sustain himself
between trips.408 Both Prabhakar and Sujata asserted that the UID would
solve these problems by granting access to those resources and services
previously unavailable due to lack of official identity documents,
particularly in the realm of finance.
Poverty alleviation programs can be used to empower
marginalized populations, or they can be used to further exclude them.

Salil Prabhakar, "Large Scale Biometrics: Panel Discussion," in Biometrics Theory,

Applications and Systems, ed. IEEE (Arlington, VA).
408 Chaturvedi.
407

224

Often exclusion is not a matter of outright abandonment, but rather of

making things marginally more difficult, marginally more out of reach.
This is the poverty premium that Prahakar describes, but it is also the
danger inherent in the UID. Despite the desire to grant dignity,
recognition, and ease of access to social welfare programs that should
rightfully be assisting the impoverished, the technical function of the UID
project is to de-duplicate those registered and to deny access to those who
would make fraudulent claims. Each encounter is of presumptive fraud
that must be proven otherwise, and it is never possible to pre-empt the
accusation. It is possible for identification to damn those it catches doing
wrong, but the best it can offer those in the right is temporary, contingent
access. This leads to an ambiguity and arbitrariness that must be
negotiated and actively engaged, leading to tactical revealing and
concealment.
The UID is specifically created to combat such tactics,
dematerializing and making its own functioning illegible. Yet the
impossibility of totality through the inclusion of exception all but ensures
the intrusion of the political into the utopian dream of technocratic
empowerment. As this occurs, the UIDAI must ask itself if its role is to
become a tool of the poor to strategically make themselves visible to the
state, or if its purpose is to expose the dishonest few at a premium cost to

225

those who can afford it least. The difference between the two may be as
simple as a question of asking for whom is the program mandatory? If, as
currently structured, it is those who are dependent upon government
subsidies who must procure and produce upon request an Aadhaar
number and matching biometrics, then it will most likely become a
burden and a means of exclusion. If, however, it is the government
agencies who must accept Aadhaar as a legitimate and final form of
identification among many possible options, then the burden is on the state to
provide a multiplicity of means to allow access to those who are in need.

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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION:
UNFIXED
Inigo Montoya: Who are you?
Man in Black: No one of consequence.
Inigo Montoya: I must know...
Man in Black: Get used to disappointment.
-William Goldman, The Princess Bride409
The Future is Now
My research question was why do states (1) identify (2) through
bodies and (3) with what effect? States, or to be specific, modern
bureaucratic states, identify in order to manifest and materialize their
relationship with their subjects. It is necessary, even in conditions of
extreme neglect and intentional harm, that if life is being managed that
identification of some sort exists. This does not have to be individual
identification, but the structural drives of bureaucracies to categorize,
track, and discriminate amongst individuals as individuals leads to
personal identification. Situations in which the ontological basis of
identity is weak, both in situations of biographical or psychological
disruption and increasingly simply due to the digitization and
409

William Goldman, The Princess Bride : S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High
Adventure, 1st Harvest mass market ed. (Orlando: Harcourt).

227

virtualization of personas, causes the state to grasp for the stability of

materiality. This materiality is constructed and contingent, and is
ultimately a representation of an individuals corporeal being. This
representation is given greater truth value because of the ontological bias
towards materiality, however constructed it may be, as well as an
understanding that the less control the individual has over its
transmission and legibility, the more valid it will be. Identification
technologies of the body are seen as possessing the potential to become
totalities due to the lived experience that each individual only possess one
body and one true identity. This falls short in application, however, and
will never actually reach the promised potential no matter how accurate
the technologies become. The gap between the fantasy and reality of
identification technologies is a productive space that allows for the
legitimization of bureaucratic decisions while maintaining the flexibility
for human intervention. The result is far more ambiguous for the subjects
of identification, for instead of solidifying potentially positive
relationships with the state, these technologies instead create new
moments in which they have to prove the most basic of facts about
themselves, i.e. who they are, with no guarantee that technical error and
arbitrary intervention may not side against them. These programs are all

228

contingent and contextual historically, but the issues are generally the
same.
In their report Identification for Development: The Biometrics
Revolution, Alan Gelb and Julia Clark identified over 230 relevant
biometric identification cases spread across more than 80 developing
countries, of which they were able to confirm and research some 160
cases in 73 countries.410 Of these, 45 cases were foundational rather
than functional, i.e. that they were being put in place as an all-purpose
ID rather than for a specific program such as elections or welfare.411 While
Gelb and Clark make a general distinction between the ID programs of
developing and developed countries, stating that the former primarily use
biometrics for civil purposes and the latter for security. However,
identification, and in particular biometric identification, is being used with
increasing frequency in more applications and contexts both civil and
commercial in developed countries. Of particular note are attempts to
create stable identities for use in online contexts and commerce, for
example the U.S. National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace
and the U.K.s Identity Assurance Scheme. As with the contradictory but
overlapping programs of the UID and NPR in India, pushes for
interoperability between programs and databases blur the lines between
410
411

Jaquet-Chiffelle, "Virtual Persons and Identities," 19.

"Virtual Persons and Identities," 19-20.

229

civil and security purposes, between public and private sectors, and even
between national borders. We may never see a single, central global
database, or even a database that holds a national monopoly, but the
networking of the various programs may make such an artifact
superfluous. Returning to Daniel Soloves concerns that were raised in
the Chapter II, the fear should not be of the all-knowing totalitarian, but
rather of the absurd, the incomplete, and the Kafkaesque.412 A
proliferation of databases does not equal a system of redundant checksand-balances, but rather the spread of information authority whose
methods and rounding-errors are black-boxed to the rest of the
network.
My dissertation shows that identification programs and
technologies should not be taken as prima facie good or bad. Identification
is the materialization and the manifestation of the relationship between
the state and the individual, and at their best these technologies can be
used to make claims against the state and to protect personal
information.413 The tools of governmentality are precisely that- tools- and
just as swords can be beaten into ploughshares, fingerprints can come to
represent not the criminal but the human. The cards, however, are
Solove, Dp.
I think a good example of biometric technology being used as a privacy enhancing
technology is in the U.S. Healthcare industry, in which access to medical records are
controlled by palm-vein recognition technology, which is good for authentication but not
for identification, thus making it a poor database for security or interoperability.
412
413

230

currently stacked against this outcome; it would take quite a bit of beating
to turn most identification programs against the surveillance state, and
even those that are set up as being pro-poor such as the UID could easily
be transformed into a means of expanding governmental power.414

Figure VI-1: Remains of the U.K. Identity Database415

This does not mean that the outcomes of identification projects are
inevitable or immutable.416 Many early and even recent attempts at

To repeat a point in Chapter V, while the focus of the UID is authentication, it must
first de-duplicate, which is essentially an identification task. It would only take minor
changes in policy to use the de-duplication process to search for the identities of
unknown individuals. This is only bolstered by the decision to keep the original images
on file and not just the templates.
415
UK Home Office, "Shredded Bits of the Database," (Flickr).
416
Although they do take advantage of the inevitability crisis Benjamin J. Muller, "Borders,
Bodies, and Biometrics: Towards Identity Management," in Global Surveillance and Policing :
Borders, Security, Identity, ed. Elia Zureik and Mark B. Salter (Cullompton ; Portland, Ore.:
Willan).
414

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deploying both civil and security identity programs have met with public
outrage, internal dissent, and outright failure.417 The specter of the
tattooed identity often raises its head, only to be promptly laughed at
rejected as a horrific relic (again, even in the concentration camp system,
the practice did not extend past Auschwitz). Perhaps the most poignant
example of a failed identity program is the U.K.s national ID card
database, which was already in advanced enrollment stages when an
organized opposition campaign and changing political winds doomed its
full implementation. How does one destroy a database? It turns out that
databases, far from being truly ephemeral, ethereal objects, actually
possess materiality that can be grasped, manipulated, and destroyed.
Figure VI-1 is a picture of the shredded servers, crunched into bits due to
the difficulties to ever truly purge information from a hard-drive. As
satisfying as this may have been for privacy advocates, the picture should
be likewise chilling. The traces that are left behind so easily now by our
leaky vessels as we traverse the modern landscape are not so readily
erased without extreme real-world intervention.
The conversation that often surrounds programs of identification
often falls into what Ben Kafka called the Duck Soup Problem from the

Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification; Gates, Our
Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance; Magnet,
When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity.
417

232

Marx Brothers movie, wherein Groucho Marx declares, the food in this
restaurant is terrible and the portions are too small! In other words,
programs are seen as both undesirable for privacy or political concerns,
while at the same time complaints are made that the technologies do not
work as they should, that they are inefficient and incomplete. But to
complete or advance the technology is to make an undesirable program
more effective! While my dissertation builds off of the argument that
identification technologies, and biometrics in particular, rarely if ever are
capable of delivering the totalities and solutions to the social problems
that their proponents promise, it is my steadfast goal not to fall too deep
into conversations of relative efficiencies. In part, this because given the
rapid pace of technological change, that would be a fools errand;
predictions are invalidated almost as quickly as they are made. More
importantly, however, it is an unnecessary argument, at least in an
academic context.418 Identification programs will never be total and will
never be complete because representation is never total nor complete, or it
ceases to be a representation. Infinitesimally small probabilities of error
are still possible, and exceptions will always exist.

For advocates for and against these programs, numbers and cost-benefit analyses are
the currency with which to win over the officials creating and administering identity
policy.
418

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This does not mean that identification does not work in practice,
but it does mean that the work it does fits neither utopic nor dystopic
fantasies of totality. This work is the legitimization of bureaucratic
decision-making, and the ever-present possibility of technological error
actively enables the arbitrary intervention of human agents, for better or
worse. The technology also becomes a convenient scapegoat for official
failure, for example, when biometric systems did not actually eradicate
electoral fraud.419 Instead of admitting that such fraud has deeper, more
systemic roots that could not possibly be solved through a single
technological fix, officials blamed the workings of the particular systems
and vendors used. This may be seen as a victory for opponents of such
systems, but in fact it just keeps the door open for technological advances
and keeps the underlying political and social structures intact.
The primary concern is the increasing proliferation of points at
which arbitrary power and ambiguity touches individuals. As
demonstrated by the overwhelmingly gray fog that encompasses not just
the Iraqi and Afghanistani populations, but also NGOs, third country
nationals, and- if they were being totally honest- U.S. troops themselves in
the U.S. militarys biometric databases, it is never possible to prove the
positive, to prove that you are not a fraud, and that you are the same you
Daniel Finnan, "Biometric Breakdown Means Second Day of Voting in Ghana," RFI
English, December 8th.
419

234

from ten days ago. With this I agree with Agamben that identification
makes us always-already suspects, but it is not criminality that is at stake.
Instead, the crime is simply of being an error, an exception, an object in
need of scrutiny. It is in these mini-states of exception that the fragile and
constructed nature of our identities and our social standing are exposed,
laid bare for arbitration by all-too-human Nobodies. It is against the
politics of contingency and ambiguity that the battles of identification
must be fought, where the burden of proof must be on the state and not
the individual, where the relationships mediated by identity documents
enable rather than call into question the claims of the individual. The
seeming inevitability of identification technologies is primarily due to the
fact that they are the natural extensions of current governmental logic.
But as eloquently shown by Alexei Yurchak in his book Everything Was
Forever, Until It Was No More, governmental logics are only inescapable
from the inside.420 As soon as they cease to hold sway, the inherent
cracks, contradictions and failures that were always present become
visible, and what was once deemed impossible to even imagine becomes
predestined.

420

Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More : The Last Soviet Generation,
In-Formation Series (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

235

Future Research: State Forgery

There is still a great deal of research to be done on the subject of
state identification. My dissertation establishes a flexible project that
examines underlying governmental logics and effects across historical and
national contexts. There are blind spots in the project that were present
both by design and by necessity. Ethnography of practice, i.e. of the
moment of enrollment and identification, was outside the scope of the
dissertation, but would be a means by which to test the conclusions
regarding the actual effects of identification technologies in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and India. In particular, further research on the actual
application of the UID and, frankly, anything beyond published
documents on the NPR is needed, but was impossible for me given the
resources available. More research on the flip side of identification, i.e. on
the profiles created through data analysis and risk management regimes,
would help fill out the way in which the idem- identification of biometrics
is used in practice, as part of a larger surveillant assemblage. This was
hinted at through my work, but not fully explored. A concise and
complete history of the role of the biometrics industry is lacking, and
would be a welcome and necessary addition to the field.421

421

There are general histories already in place, but I feel that a full telling of the industrial side has
yet to be written. See: Gates, Our Biometric Future : Facial Recognition Technology and the
Culture of Surveillance; Magnet, When Biometrics Fail : Gender, Race, and the Technology of

236

In addition to continuing work on each of these individual case

studies, there is one project in particular that would be a natural
outgrowth of my dissertation research. There is an inherent, and as of yet
unstudied, contradiction in the way in which these states set up massive
organizations to register and observe the activities of their citizens, and
yet undermine these very institutions in order to conceal their own secret
activities. The nature of surveillance is such that while there are benefits to
the state that its subjects know that they are at times under surveillance,
transparency opens the door to circumvention. Surveillance states require
the simultaneous visibility of their subjects and concealment of their
agents and tools. As such, this is not a novel observation; in the most
famous metaphor for modern surveillance, Foucault describes the center
of the panoptic prison as containing a watch tower that is opaque to the
prisoners, in which the guard may or may not be watching, and may or
may not even be present.422 Cameras serve different purposes if they are
in plain view or hidden, and resistance often occurs through the unveiling
of surveillance structures and policies. Sousveillance, the term given to
turning the tools of capture and recording back on the apparatuses of the
state, includes videotaping police officers and mapping out speed

Identity; Elia; Karen Hindle Zureik, "Governance, Security and Technology: The Case of
Biometrics," Studies in Political Economy 73, no. Spring/Summer.
422 Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison.

237

cameras.423 The dynamic of state control and resistance is further

complicated by the presence of international political struggles for
information control, a realm traditionally known as espionage and
counter-espionage.
The opacity of surveillance takes an interesting turn when
discussing practices of identification. The spread of biometric
technologies has caused concern within intelligence communities about
the potential problems involved in keeping the identities of undercover
agents secret both domestically and abroad. The call for identity
dominance was primarily aimed at denying enemies of U.S. military
operations anonymity, but a secondary aspect was the ability to control
information about the identities of U.S. military personnel. This aspect of
identification programs in the U.S. is highly classified, as it involves
directly undermining the integrity of identity databases both internally
and internationally.424 The parsed-together CCTV footage of Israeli
intelligence agents on an assassination mission of a Hamas leader in
Dubai,425 as well as the recent ensnarement of former CIA-director David

Jane; Kerr Bailey, Ian, "Seizing Control?: The Experience Capture Experiments of
Ringley & Mann," Ethics and Information Technology 9, no. 2.
424 Stein, "Cia's Secret Fear: High Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies' Cover."
425 Kim Zetter, "Dubai Assassination Followed Failed Attempt by Same Team," Wired
Threat Level, January 1.
423

238

Petraeus in a sex scandal,426 are both cited as examples of the difficulties

even the most adept spies have in operating undetected under current
surveillance regimes.
Rather than confront the highly secretive and classified aspects of
current intelligence policy, I would conduct an historical study of
identification regimes during times of conflict or intense internal
surveillance, such as Nazi Germany or the former German Democratic
Republic of East Germany. I would hope to answer the following
question: what effect, if any, did the act of falsifying identity documents
and records have on attitudes towards those records? Specifically, did the
creation of loopholes and fake IDs in order to accommodate the needs of
intelligence agents and the secret police cause concern about the integrity
of the identification system and thus calls for tighter control? Or was the
validity of the various tokens of identity held to a different standard
depending on who held them? My hypothesis is that the production of
false identities would have both bolstered state power, as it monopolized
within the bureaucracy the ability to fabricate or even ignore the
documents it produced, as well as subtly undermined it. As long as
forgery was possible regarding identity, especially that sanctioned by the
state, no identification documentation could ever be truly trusted. The
Patrick Radden Keefe, "The Surveillance State Takes Friendly Fire," The New Yorker,
November 13th, 2012.
426

239

fantasy of a totality of identification is always/already unfixed and

unfixable, but the burden of this breakdown falls upon the individuals
whose bodies cannot lie but also cannot speak truth.

240

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