The government will not take fingerprints during the development of the National Digital Identity (IDN), addressing rumours spread by content creators on various social media platforms.
Minister of Communications and Digital, Fahmi Fadzil was quoted by Bernama saying that said that since the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim made an announcement about the initiative, his Ministry found a lot of inaccurate, wrong and false content being spread on social media, stating that the government would do so.
Although this (IDN) is under MIMOS and not KKD, I take the opportunity to explain that we do not intend to take fingerprints. This digital ID is a ‘single sign-on’, this is what we are trying to convey to the people.
Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil
He added that the information about fingerprints and so on is with the Ministry of Home Affairs, National Registration Department, in response to a question and answer session at Dewan Rakyat today.
IDN is being used in other countries
It’s been previously reported that the Ministry has given assurance that the development of IDN would not affect personal data security, adding that the initiative that’s being executed by MIMOS Berhad has been used in several countries such as Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
On 21 November, Anwar said the government appointed MIMOS’ national Applied Research And Development (R&D) center as the agency to implement the IDN program with an initial allocation of RM80 million.
IDN is a form of digital self-identification and authentication that refers to a single source, which makes it easier for citizens to deal face-to-face or virtually with digital service providers from the public and private sectors with safe, secure and time-saving identity verification, according to the Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
No time restrictions on social media
Fahmi also mentioned that the government currently does not intend to restrict or limit the number of hours of use of social media such as TikTok and YouTube to prevent the spread of fake news.
Actually, parents can also set limits for the use of any application. This is based on devices such as the iPhone, Samsung and so on that have that option.
Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil
However, Fahmi said his ministry often works with social media platform providers such as TikTok to ensure that incorrect content or false information can be taken down.
