Alan Gelb was mentioned in a Foreign Policy article on biometrics
From the Article
In the Western world, government-mandated biometric IDs -- identification systems that identify individuals based on fingerprints, irises, and other unique physical traits -- are often regarded with suspicion, even hostility. Last spring, one proposal in the United States to link biometric data to Social Security cards was slammed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others on grounds that it would "violate privacy by helping to consolidate data and facilitate tracking of individuals," bringing "government into the very center of our lives." In Britain, a program for a national biometric ID was halted, as Home Secretary Theresa May put it last spring, "to reduce the control of the state over decent, law-abiding people."
Recording an individual's biometric information does have a "Big Brother" feel to it. But while civil libertarians' concerns of a "biometric surveillance state" may be somewhat understandable in the developed world, in the developing world, biometric IDs have very different implications -- they could transform millions of lives for the better.
For the world's poorest, who often have insufficient or no proof of identity, anonymity is rarely a recipe for "freedom." Rather, it's a cause of disenfranchisement, disempowerment, and exclusion.
According to the United Nations Development Program's 2008 report "Making the Law Work for Everyone," roughly four out of every 10 children in the developing world are still not registered with the state by age 5. "[I]n the least-developed countries," the report found, "this number climbs to a shocking 71 percent." In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the report found, more than half of births go unregistered, and in Nepal, that fraction climbs to four of every five. In Tanzania and Zambia, roughly 9 in 10 children don't have a birth certificate, according to UNICEF's latest numbers.
As Alan Gelb of the Center for Global Development, who has been researching biometric IDs, recently noted, some form of official identification is necessary almost everywhere in the world for everything from voting to securing credit to receiving health care. Almost all the rights, protections, and entitlements of the state, in fact, depend on being able to prove that you are who you say you are. How does one get a bank account or take a formal loan, after all, without proper identification?