Sunny Waghela
30th January 2011
The advent of the mega project, Unique Identity Number (UID) has been constantly catching my eyes and to say the least, it will be a good project to start with, except if India is deciding to follow a certain pattern of a country, which I guess you all already know. Following the system as well as the ideas of US is never going to get the poor Indian government anywhere near to the pinnacle, but it may suddenly counter-react to what may prove to be a disastrous project of all.
Not to mention the likes of the most experienced technical people at the very core of project, we will be having something which the US calls as SSN (Social Security Number). Now, SSN has a very bad past and some shaky and unseeingly ugly future with no clue whatsoever happening in the present.
Recent reports from their sites have suggested that they have been conned and have stipulated an annual cost of almost $50 billion in 2007 alone. With this huge an amount, Indian government may get obvious another reason to convert it into a 2G or a CWG!
Coming back to India, we have been already launched the project and UID will suppress a lot of paper work and will provide for the e-governance for the Lok Sabha as well as local assemblies. UID also promises to help transact online for pensioners and other working class as they will extend to get revenue with e-cash via the UID for basic amenities and other supplies of power, gas, as well as the real estates and many more. Though there wont be any doubt with an ex-Infosys heading the project, but actually, how secure can he keep all these transactions, where even the private banks tend to fail against the blackhat hackers?
Going back to US, the reports have shown that the websites as well as servers hosting the SSN database online are under constant attacks from hijackers all over the world. The Indian version of UID Aadhar promises of keeping up with it, but trusts me, I have visited that site, and looking at it, I hope to bring to the notice of government once again, that dealing with this systems is risky and the best of people require to handle this, or else it can be big a massacre, in the history of Indian cyber space.
It will shake the very foundations of the UID project. The websites showing links to the site of UID are so vulnerable, that it may be easy to enter through them. Apart from that, the UID site is not hosted on the NIC server, which Indian government touts blindly as its most secure server.
Bringing to the end, the UID process is only and will be successful if and only if, there is secure sense and information handling done properly, and not handed into some hands which can make it a repeat of other various disastrous projects, which I need not mention.
Not to mention the likes of the most experienced technical people at the very core of project, we will be having something which the US calls as SSN (Social Security Number). Now, SSN has a very bad past and some shaky and unseeingly ugly future with no clue whatsoever happening in the present.
Recent reports from their sites have suggested that they have been conned and have stipulated an annual cost of almost $50 billion in 2007 alone. With this huge an amount, Indian government may get obvious another reason to convert it into a 2G or a CWG!
Coming back to India, we have been already launched the project and UID will suppress a lot of paper work and will provide for the e-governance for the Lok Sabha as well as local assemblies. UID also promises to help transact online for pensioners and other working class as they will extend to get revenue with e-cash via the UID for basic amenities and other supplies of power, gas, as well as the real estates and many more. Though there wont be any doubt with an ex-Infosys heading the project, but actually, how secure can he keep all these transactions, where even the private banks tend to fail against the blackhat hackers?
Going back to US, the reports have shown that the websites as well as servers hosting the SSN database online are under constant attacks from hijackers all over the world. The Indian version of UID Aadhar promises of keeping up with it, but trusts me, I have visited that site, and looking at it, I hope to bring to the notice of government once again, that dealing with this systems is risky and the best of people require to handle this, or else it can be big a massacre, in the history of Indian cyber space.
It will shake the very foundations of the UID project. The websites showing links to the site of UID are so vulnerable, that it may be easy to enter through them. Apart from that, the UID site is not hosted on the NIC server, which Indian government touts blindly as its most secure server.
Bringing to the end, the UID process is only and will be successful if and only if, there is secure sense and information handling done properly, and not handed into some hands which can make it a repeat of other various disastrous projects, which I need not mention.
