The Maldives Copyright Law (law 23/2010) was published in the gazette on the 21st August 2010. According to the clause 39, the law will be in full effect after 180 days of being gazetted, which would be 19 April 2011.
It is with great pleasure that I welcome to all staff and students to the Maldives National University, and bid farewell to Maldives College of Higher Education.
When I came to work today, I saw the new name board on one of the buildings that said, Maldives National University, Faculty of Management and Computing.
I truly hope that its not just about changing the name board, but the development of everything that goes on in here that, so many people have been hoping and fighting for a very long time. And as a result produce more knowledgeable and productive graduates who will benefit the society and make us all proud.
I pray to Almighty Allah for a bright future for Maldives National University.
The National Identity Card (ID Card) is one of the most important official documents that we poses as a Maldivian citizen. It is issued by the Department of National Registration (DNR), and is the primary form of photo ID used for almost all the services provided by the government and private organizations. We use it for obtaining the passport, health insurance, marriage, exams, college enrollments, bank verifications, domestic air travel, new SIM card, and numerous other registrations. And of course lets not forget…voting.
Despite all this, we don’t bother much about the importance of this document unless we need it for one of the services that I mentioned before. Most of us don’t bother about keeping it safe, or making sure it is renewed before expiring. But this is not what I intend to discuss in this post.
Since it is a very important document, just like the passport, one would assume that it would have some security features that would prevent from forgeries and fraudulent reproductions. Lets take a closer look…
National ID Card Characteristics:
From the above characteristics, we can ascertain that our National ID Card can only be used as a photo ID for visual verification. There aren’t any other integrated mechanisms such as the smart passport for purposes such as biometric verification, data acquisition, etc.
Thus the visual security feature(s) are the only characteristics that maintain the security and integrity of the ID Card, which is vital as proof of authenticity. In the case of the National ID Card, the hologram is the only security feature used.
So why is this hologram so important? Because without the hologram, it is just another plastic card. With the plastic cards as cheap as US$0.15 (MRF 2.00) and ID Card Printers for just US$100-200, anyone can print and reproduce the ID Card. And today several government offices, political parties and private organizations own ID Card printers. The only things that separates the National ID Card and the cards coming out of those other printers is the hologram. So, if for any reason, this hologram layer was to come off, it would invalidate the card, i.e. of course until recently…
