13129 - Can Cambridge Analytica get hold of Aadhaar Data - News Click

Newsclick Report 26 Mar 2018

Can Cambridge Analytica get hold of Aadhaar Data - News Click

                       Newsclick Image By Nitesh

Aadhar data leak stories keep appearing in India, but an investigation of the US companies that handle Aadhaar’s biometric data collection and processing has thrown up a shocking revelation: not only are they deeply intertwined with the US intelligence and defense establishment but there are known links with Cambridge Analytica, the UK firm accused of harvesting Facebook data and using it to fix elections. In other words, these service providers to Aadhaar are potentially in a position to access Aadhaar’s personal information database, and use it for other purposes.

The recent expose of how Cambridge Analytica (CA) harvested Facebook data for use in election campaigns of President Trump has shown how personal information has now been weaponised by profit hungry companies, to be deployed not just for selling products but for political gain.

It is well known that in 2010-2012, Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) awarded contracts to three US companies for collecting biometric data (fingerprints, iris scans) from all Indians, cleaning up the data and maintaining the storage. 

These three companies were: L-1 Identity Solutions, Morpho-Safran, and Accenture Services Pvt. Ltd.

These three companies have an intricate web of relationships with Cambridge Analytica and the biggest of data collating and analysis firms, Palantir Technologies which is the front runner in data mining technologies and works almost exclusively for the US (and maybe UK’s) defense and intelligence agencies including the NSA, CIA, FBI, and various other arms of the US govt.

Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, an investor in Accenture, had funded the formation of Cambridge Analytica in 2013 as an arm of an existing firm SCL. He was instrumental in getting Cambridge Analytica to tie up with the Ted Cruz presidential campaign in the US primaries. At that time, the campaign’s chairman was Chad Sweet who had earlier worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and then was chief of staff at the US Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS). His boss at DHS was Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security during the Bush years. After Obama’s win in 2009, Chertoff and Sweet left DHS and set up the Chertoff Group. Another member of the Group was Jay M.Cohen who was president of the board of directors of Morpho Detection. Sweet, on the other hand was strategic adviser on mergers to L 1 Identity Solutions. Sweet’s wife Julie was CEO of Accenture North America. Incidentally, George Tenet, CIA chief during the crucial years 1997-04, became director of L 1 during 2006-2008.

So, all three of the biometric service providers for UIDAI, were interconnected and deeply tied to the US defense-intelligence establishment and the slew of private companies that receive money from it in out contracts. Cambridge Analytica was part and parcel of this network.

Now Morpho was acquired by Safran, a French defense conglomerate in 2009. In 2010, UIDAI signed the contracts with the three companies. A few weeks later Safran acquired L 1 Identity also and merged it with MorphoTrust. Who acted as strategic adviser to this? None other than Chad Sweet. 

Meanwhile L 1 sold its intelligence arm to BAE, the British aerospace and defense giant in 2010, and a few months later Chertoff joined BAE on its board of directors.

Morpho formed a consortium with Techmahindra owned Satyam, and along with L1 and Acceture provided biometric software to authenticate enrollments and they designed, configured and maintained the system for Aadhaar till 2012. After that they continued to maintain and service it.

The trio was also contracted to de-duplicate the data which necessarily means that they had access to all the data. Although UIDAI has argued that biometric data and demographic data are kept separate and not matched contracts with the trio seem to indicate that they were responsible for tagging “all the data relating to an applicant, together with the photographs and biometrics”, according to media sources.

The trinity of L1-MorphoSatyam-Accenture is also tasked with protecting the data. Although UIDAI has repeatedly assured that the data is safe and impenetrable, L1 had reportedly said in its filings before the US Securities Exchange Commission that “security measures used in these systems may not prevent security breaches”. This is of course standard disclaimer lingo but the fact remains that the company is not dismissing leakage or breaches as readily as UIDAI.

(This report is based on investigations 

conducted by Fountainink .)

11979 - AADHAAR, DATA SECURITY AND BREACH OF PRIVACY - DAILY PIONEER

AADHAAR, DATA SECURITY AND BREACH OF PRIVACY

Tuesday, 05 September 2017 | Sandhya Jain | in Edit

An RTI reply has punctured the UIDAI's assertion that no private entity had access to unencrypted Aadhaar data. While it is not clear who controls the data; certainly it is prone to misuse

A Right to Information (RTI) application filed by Bengaluru-based Col  Matthew Thomas, a petitioner in the right to privacy case before the Supreme Court, reveals that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), custodian of Aadhaar data, signed contracts with foreign firms giving them “full access” to classified data and personal details of citizens, which they were allowed to store for seven years.

The Centre must direct the UIDAI to make a full disclosure of the project since its inception, including contracts signed, and who selected the firms recruited for the task. The then UIDAI chairman  Nandan Nilekani must explain why the technology (hardware and software) for collecting and storing the data was not created domestically when India is supposed to be the hub for information technology services.

The RTI reply punctures the UIDAI’s assertion that no private entity had access to unencrypted Aadhaar data. The contract with US-based biometric service provider, L-1 Identity Solutions Operating Company Private Limited (now owned by French transnational Safran Group), clearly says that the firm was given Aadhaar data access “as part of its job”. Other firms given identical contracts from 2010 to 2012 include Morpho and Accenture Services Private Limited.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was persuaded that Aadhaar could expand the reach of his social welfare programmes exponentially. But recently, when data breaches became glaring, Nilekani dismissed the problem saying data security is challenging in a digital age and ran back to his parent company. The unanimous verdict of the nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court, upholding right to privacy as a fundamental right, reportedly reflects this belated understanding at the top echelons of the Government.

The contract’s Clause 15.1, ‘Data and Hardware’, says the firm “may have access to personal data of the purchaser (UID), and/or a third party or any resident of India...” Clause 3, which deals with privacy, says the biometric service provider could “collect, use, transfer, store and process the data”. Also, the biometric service provider shall process all personal data in accordance with applicable law and regulation and should not disclose such information. The contract does not define ‘personal data’.

However, according to UIDAI, personal data includes biometric (fingerprints, iris) and demographic data (name, date of birth, address, mobile number), and could include bank details, licence number, PAN number, passport number and other information furnished as part of Know Your Customer (KYC). A clause in the contract says the firm should maintain the biometric template created by it and on termination or expiry of contract, “transfer all the proprietary templates to UIDAI”.

The UIDAI claimed it had purchased the software and hardware for the Aadhaar programme but the contracts show that the biometric service providers provided hardware for the first one crore enrollments. It is not known if the hardware was checked to ascertain if data could be stolen via a back door. UIDAI’s assertion that no data ever left its servers and premises cannot be trusted as the language of the contracts clearly shows that foreign firms had access to raw data.

But is this surprising? In a Forward to a Credit Suisse study (Ideas Engine Series, June 29, 2016), Nilekani wrote, “Once in a while a major disruption or discontinuity happens which has huge consequences. In 2007, the Internet and the mobile phone came together in a whole new product called the smartphone... (which) could support Over The Top applications. The messaging solution for the smartphone…came from WhatsApp, a start-up”.

Nilekani argued that Indian banking is experiencing a ‘WhatsApp’ moment, as smartphones could reach 700 million by 2020 and over one billion Indian residents have the online biometric identity, Aadhaar. Hence it is possible to “visualise a future where every adult Indian has an Aadhaar number, a smartphone and a bank account”.

More insidiously, Aadhaar provides on-line authentication using fingerprint or iris, which can be done from anywhere, making transactions ‘presence-less’. Aadhaar’s eKYC feature enables a bank account to be opened instantly by using one’s Aadhaar number and biometric; something prone to misuse. In Jammu & Kashmir, illegal immigrants (Rohingyas) have acquired Aadhaar and ration cards.

Extolling many facets of the new technology (the India Stack), Nilekani states, “as data becomes the new currency, financial institutions will be willing to forego transaction fees to get rich digital information on their customers (italics added)”. This would accelerate the move to a cashless economy as merchant payments will also become digital.

Commending Credit Suisse’s “insightful report”, Nilekani agrees that there is a $600 billion market capitalisation opportunity possible in the next 10 years, which will be shared between existing public and private banks, new banks and new age non-bank financial companies (NBFCs). “It may even go to non-banking platform players, which use the power of data to fine-tune credit risk and pricing, and make money from customer ownership and risk arbitrage”. He expects a serious challenge to public sector banks which currently enjoy a 70 per cent market share.

The Payment Bank (Paytm), launched in 2016 (Alibaba holds 40 per cent stake), and the Unified Payment Interface (UPI)-powered payment interfaces, hope to encash the shift towards digital transactions, and get their share of the coveted $ 600 billion pie. Credit Suisse anticipates that private banks, NBFCs’ and fin-tech players will be its prime beneficiaries.

Credit Suisse explains that financial providers will become data rich in just two or three years as they receive data via transactions made through their apps, digital footprints left by individuals, smartphone data and online tax information, as three  to five billion invoices go digital with the Goods and Services Tax. Forecasting consumer debt to rise to 25 per cent of the gross domestic product from the current 17 per cent on the back of new data availability, the SME lending market could grow from $620 billion to $3,020 billion over the next decade. Aadhaar seems tailored to benefit private bankers.

This writer was invited to enroll for the National Population Register vide acknowledgement slip 130, form number 02046115, household block no. 0021, household number 128, by Enumerator OP Singh, dated May 26, 2010. Aadhaar was supposedly for BPL beneficiaries. It turned out they were one and the same.

Now, it is not clear who controls the data; certainly it is prone to misuse. The Sonia Gandhi-led UPA regime unleashed this menace through lies and deception. The Modi-led Government must fix this treachery. No country in the world has allowed bankers and corporations such totalitarian access to intimate data about its citizens.

(The writer is a political analyst and an independent researcher)

9376 - Delhi HC admits petition seeking copies of contracts between UIDAI and firms - Live Mint

Delhi HC admits petition seeking copies of contracts between UIDAI and firms

The contracts were for various purposes including the provision of biometric services

Apurva Viswanath

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Tuesday took up a petition which has sought copies of contracts between the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and companies collecting biometric data from citizens.

The contracts were for various purposes including the provision of biometric services and were between UIDAI purporting to act on behalf of the government of India and two foreign companies.

Petitioner Mathew Thomas who sought this information said this data must be made available to all Aadhaar holders. Justice Manmohan on Tuesday allowed the petitioner to include the two companies in the proceedings. The two companies are Identity Solutions, an Australia-based company that makes specialized fingerprint readers and Accenture, a company registered in the US that uses retinal scanning.

In 2013, the petitioner had filed for access to the contracts under the Right to Information Act and the central information officer had directed UIDAI to furnish copies of the contract. The court noted that UIDAI did not object to disclosing the information before the appellate body of the information commission. The petitioner told the court that, however, certain annexes of the contracts were withheld.

“We cannot disclose the technical aspects of the contract as it is patented technology of the company,” a lawyer representing UIDAI told the court.

Thomas is also one of the petitioners in a bunch of cases pending before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar. Some of the cases deal with Aadhaar numbers being made mandatory to avail certain government benefits and services.

Others deal with the number itself being in violation of an individual’s privacy, especially in the absence of any backing regulation or oversight, and still others deal with a possible misuse of the information. The apex court has referred the question on whether Aadhaar violates an individual’s right to privacy under the Constitution.

The UIDAI does not have any legislative backing and was constituted by a notification in 2009 under the erstwhile Planning Commission.

As of now, 920 million Indian citizens have been allotted Aadhaar numbers. The case will be heard next on 3 September.

Apurva Vishwanath

4702 - SC rap welcome, but Aadhaar fight continues - DNA

SC rap welcome, but Aadhaar fight continues

Tuesday, Sep 24, 2013, 12:59 IST | Place: Bangalore | Agency: DNA

Malavika Velayanikal  

Activists and others who have been opposing Aadhaar want UID project to be scrapped

Many Bangaloreans are gladly saying “I told you so!” since the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Unique Identification Card cannot be mandatory to avail benefits of government schemes.

There have been several active campaigns against Aadhaar, and some of the campaigners, besides petitions, have even filed suits against the government on the UID project. For them, the SC ruling has come as a welcome move. It is the first step towards halting the faulty project, they say.

Colonel Thomas Mathew, one of the first to file a civil suit on this in early 2011, vows that the fight is far from over. “The SC ruling today is the first step in the right direction of course. But we will continue our fight. We had asked the court to put a stop to this Aadhaar project. Instead the SC has said that the registration for the identity card was purely voluntary and government departments cannot demand the card in order to provide a service.”

WHERE’S THE LEGAL SANCTITY?
There is no law or ordinance regarding Aadhaar. “If the government links ration, LPG or scholarships to Aadhaar, what right to food or right to education do we as Indian citizens claim to have?” Colonel Mathew asks. “If a stranger asks for your name and address, you do not give, and yet you willingly run to fly-by-night operators to submit your biometrics. Did you check who will make use of your information? Which company made the instruments which recorded the biometrics? Will your data be used by other countries? The public are stupid to give all their information to contract employees who are there today and gone tomorrow,” he rues.

The reason why he filed a suit instead of a PIL, he says, was to expose the fraud and corruption involved in the whole process.

WHO GETS THE DATA?
“Everything about it is wrong. The government has been misleading the public about it. It entrusted the process to two companies, L1 Identities Solutions, which was bought by Safron and renamed as Morpho Trust, and Accenture Services, both of which have been mired in fraud. Both of them have been found guilty on several counts and had to pay huge penalties.

Nandan Nilekani was given ID Limelight Award in Milan for his work on the UID project. A key sponsor of the award was Safron Morpho. How can we trust them with such sensitive information?” senior advocate BT Venkatesh, who filed the suit for Colonel Mathew and Somashekara, asks.

He defines the UID project as a “criminal conspiracy by the state”.

The suit was dismissed once, and the appeal on it will be heard in October. “All the people involved in this project should be sent to jail,” he says.

NOT A PENNY MORE
Vinay B, an urban reform researcher, who has been actively fighting for the Say No to UID Campaign, says that Monday’s SC ruling proves that “the government has been misleading people.

By making citizens feel threatened that they would lose out on benefits if they do not have an Aadhaar, the government has treated people badly. They spread so many misconceptions about this project. For example, most people believe it to be a card, when it is just a letter. The whole UID exercise shows how people need to be aware. I hope the people will take the government to task now,” he says.

Crores of rupees have been spent on the project already. Not another paisa should be spent on it anymore, these campaigners say.

4605 - UIDAI admits to tie-ups with French, American companies - New Indian Express

UIDAI admits to tie-ups with French, American companies

By Yatish Yadav - NEW DELHI

Published: 13th September 2013 09:23 AM

Last Updated: 13th September 2013 09:23 AM

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has finally agreed to disclose the contracts it had signed with French and US biometric technology companies, L-1 Identity Solutions and Accenture.

The UIDAI, which was conceived by the Planning Commission to provide identification for each resident across the country, signed a contract with L-1 Identity Solutions in July 2010. Subsequently, it awarded over 30 contracts to various private companies to deliver Aadhaar numbers, but the agreements were never made public apparently because of a commercial confidentiality clause. 

In September 2010, L-1 Identity Solutions was acquired by a French company, Safran SA Group, which had worked with law-enforcement agencies in other countries. Interestingly, the Nandan Nilekani-led UIDAI had said in an RTI reply that “there are no means to verify whether the said companies are of US origin or not”.

The reply came in July 2011, exactly a year after L-1 Identity Solutions was contracted to supply finger and iris biometric capture devices for approximately $24.5 million.

A plea to access the contract agreement was filed by Mathew Thomas, a former defence scientist from Bangalore.

Gopal Krishna of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties, who represented Mathew in the Central Information Commission (CIC), described it as a clear act of omission, and said that feigning ignorance about the companies’ origin wasn’t pardonable at all.

“Didn’t Nilekani know the country of origin of the companies which were awarded contracts by the UIDAI? As far as providing information under the RTI Act is concerned, the CIC had earlier mentioned that citizens own the government and all information belongs to them. So the claim of commercial confidence is contrary to the RTI Act,” Krishna said.

Civil society groups had opposed the collection of personal biometric data, raising suspicions of potential misuse.

3232 - Accenture bags Aadhaar deal in Punjab

Accenture bags Aadhaar deal in Punjab

PTI | Apr 10, 2013, 06.58 PM IST

Accenture said it has bagged a 12-month contract for technology and management consulting services from the Punjab government.

MUMBAI: IT consulting firm Accenture said it has bagged a 12-month contract for technology and management consulting services from the Punjab government. 

The deal size was not disclosed. Accenture will re-engineer and implement the way beneficiary programs are delivered in Punjab under the Aadhaar biometric identification program, Accenture said in a statement. 

The contract will help the Punjab government identify eligible citizens and eliminate duplicate and incorrect records for the Department of Food and Civil Supplies, it added. 

The biometric-based service delivery model will also provide the government by ensuring accurate inclusion of recipients, reducing the cost of service delivery by using direct, government-to-citizens payments, it said. 

The new system also will enhance program accountability and create a way to trace service delivery, Accenture said. 

Aadhaar is a 12-digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India. 

"The delivery of government to citizen services and benefits efficiently will pave the way in ensuring economic inclusion. Technology will aid the process and create significant cost savings that can be used for other development activities," Accenture Managing Director (Health & Public Service operating group India) Nilaya Varma said. 

As the project manager, Accenture also will help the state increase citizen awareness on the goals and objectives of Aadhaar, and support the government with any required legal and policy changes, the statement said.

3085 - European Commission Selects Consortium of Accenture, Morpho and HP to Maintain EU Visa Information and Biometric Matching Systems

Wed  Feb 20   2013

European Commission Selects Consortium of Accenture, Morpho and HP to Maintain EU Visa Information and Biometric Matching Systems

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BRUSSELS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The European Commission Directorate General for Home Affairs has awarded a consortium of Accenture (NYSE: ACN), Morpho (Safran) and HP, a contract to maintain the European Visa Information System (VIS). The contract is for three years with a possible one-year extension to a maximum value of €70 million (approx.US$93 million).

The project will support the exchange of visa data across border management authorities by ensuring the processing capacity of the system and the availability of high levels of search and matching capabilities required for visa applications. The VIS system went live, on schedule, in October 2011 and has since experienced increased usage by consulates in non-EU countries and external border crossing points of Schengen states.

 “Accenture has in-depth experience working with border agencies around the world in helping them meet the challenges of managing the growing numbers of travelers and increased visa application complexity,” said Mark Crego who leads Accenture’s global Border and Identity Management business. “We are pleased to have been chosen by the European Commission to lead this consortium of suppliers over the coming years.”

 As consortium lead, Accenture will assume overall project responsibilities, overseeing the integration of functional, technical and operational maintenance to the VIS, and Morpho will provide biometric matching services. Accenture and Morpho (as the Bridge Consortium) have worked with the European Commission since 2007 on the development and support of the biometric matching engine of the VIS.

 “Morpho is proud to have been chosen, once again, to supply the biometric matching services for the VIS,” said Jean-Paul Jainsky, chairman and chief executive officer of Morpho. “Biometrics has become a key element for effective border management, and as the world leader in biometric technology, we are committed to developing state-of-the-art solutions to meet the current and emerging needs of this market.”

 HP has worked with the European Commission since 2005, deploying the HP Converged Infrastructure solution and associated technology services for the VIS as well as the archiving and back-up solution. Under the new contract, there is the potential for additional HP network support with associated consulting and IT support services. Subcontractors to Accenture are Daon and WCC Smart Search and Match who will provide IT support and services.

 Border security and citizen protection is becoming increasingly important,” stated Peter Ryan, senior vice president and managing director, HP EMEA. “HP’s mission-critical Converged Infrastructure is key to delivering multi-national IT projects in the public safety domain.”

 VIS is at the core of the visa application process to the Schengen area and enables Schengen States to store and exchange alphanumeric and biometric data relating to visa applications of third-country citizens. As a subcomponent of VIS, a Biometric Matching System (BMS) enables the accurate identification of visa applicants through matching biometric data, such as fingerprints, to identities to establish and verify visa applications.

Learn more about Accenture’s Defense & Public Safety industry, Turning Insights into Outcomes, Accenture Border and Identity Services and Delivering Public Service for the Future.

 About Accenture

 Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 259,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2012. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT Infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

Morpho, a high-technology company in the Safran group, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of identification, detection and e-document solutions. Morpho is specialized in personal rights and flow management applications, in particular based on biometrics, a sector in which it is the world leader, as well as secure terminals and smart cards. Morpho’s integrated systems and equipment are deployed worldwide and contribute to the safety and security of transportation, data, people and countries.

For more information: www.morpho.com - www.safran-group.com

 Contacts

Accenture: Joe Doyle, + 353 87 2507583, joe.x.doyle@accenture.com
HP: Anneleen Holleweg, + 32 475804006, anneleen.holleweg@hp.com
Morpho: Christelle Kinkead, + 33 0 1 58 11 87 44, christelle.kinkead@morpho.com

2424 - IT vendors including Accenture-NEC, L1 ID and Mahindra Satyam-Morpho lock horns with Unique ID Authority - Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-it/services-apps/IT-vendors-including-Accenture-NEC-L1-ID-and-Mahindra-Satyam-Morpho-lock-horns-with-Unique-ID-Authority/articleshow/12173497.cms

Harsimran JulkaHarsimran Julka, ET Bureau | Mar 7, 2012, 01.09PM IST

NEW DELHI: Biometric vendors de-duplicating Aadhaar numbers have refused to work with Unique ID Authority of India after finishing their contract next month. The vendors were eliminating duplicate or redundant information in the Aadhaar IDs at the price of Rs 2.75 per number fixed with the agency.

The deadlock over price threatens to create an uncertainty for the second phase of enrollments, which starts post-April, for about 40 crore citizens, even as new service provider is yet to come on board and take over UIDAI's IT operations. Three consortiums, led by Accenture-NEC, L1 ID Solutions and Mahindra Satyam-Morpho, are providing the biometric de-duplication for the Aadhaar scheme for about 20 crore Indian residents.

All the IT consortiums have told the UIDAI to revise charges due to a hike in price by their biometric partners. "There are only four biometric providers present in India. All of them have hiked costs due to high imports costs, leading us to quote a price of Rs 8 per number," said an official of an existing provider.

Less than six companies in the world are capable of providing biometric solutions at a large scale, and at high quality standards. Biometric companies NEC, L1, Morpho and Cogent passed the UIDAI's biometric standard test, and were eligible to be partnered by any IT vendor. Some others had failed the standard test.

A UIDAI spokesperson did not revert on ET's queries as to the plan to run operations post-April without a biometric vendor. The official, however, added on price hike that vendors will have to negotiate it with their registrars.

HCL Infosystems, which has emerged as the lowest financial bidder for the managed service provider contract, has been learnt to have quoted a price of Rs 2.75 per number to the government in its bid. The MSP contract is to store data, de-duplicate and issue Aadhaar numbers for 70 crore people. "Even a price hike of 1 will mean a hit of Rs 70 crore on HCL Infosystems' balance sheet," said another IT vendor who had backed out from bidding for the MSP contract.

"We are requesting the government to let existing biometric providers work with MSP. Handing over the private data of citizens in the hands of an untested technology might pose great risk," said a biometric vendor. "Trial and error will create backlog," he added.

HCL Infosystems doesn't have its own IP on biometrics and is learnt to have partnered with Morpho for biometrics. About 13.5 crore people have been issued Aadhaar numbers, and the rest will be issued over coming weeks. UIDAI plans to start the next phase of enrolling additional 40 crore people by June 2013, from next month.

2146 - Foreign agencies can access Aadhar data - The Sunday Guardian

GOVIND KRISHNAN V.  Bangalore | 25Th Dec

The biometric and demographic data collected for Aadhar may be extremely vulnerable to access by foreign intelligence services, defence services and multinationals interested in the commercial use of the data.

A woman looks at an Iris scanner during data collection for UIDAI, in a village near Bangalore. AFP

The three private entities contracted by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for biometric solutions for Aadhar, have strong ties with the US and the French intelligence or defence establishments. The machines that collect fingerprints and iris scans are being supplied by L1 Identity Solutions, a US security and identity company, which is a major contractor for the US intelligence and defence department. George Tenet, ex-chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Loius Freeh, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Admiral Loy, who was the acting director of US Homeland Security are among current or former members of L1's board of directors. 

The de-duplication of Aadhar data is being done by Morpho-Satyam, a consortium formed between Mahindra Satyam and Morpho, which is a subsidiary of Safran, a French identity and defence supplier. The French government owns 30% stake in Safran and has four representatives in its board of directors. In July, Safran acquired L1 Identity Solutions and partly merged it with Morpho.

The three private entities contracted  by the UIDAI  for  biometric solutions  for Aadhar,  have strong ties with the US and the French intelligence or defence establishments.

The UIDAI gave contracts for processing and verifying biometric data to Morpho-Satyam, L1 Identity Solutions and software company Accenture on 30 July 2010 without a tender process. On 20 September 2010, Morpho signed a merger agreement with the American Identity Company. In effect, the UIDAI has given two contracts to the same company. An email sent to UIDAI officials, including chairperson Nandan Nilekani, enquiring whether UIDAI was aware of the upcoming merger between Morpho and L1 Identity Solutions, did not fetch a reply.

A striking instance of conflict of interest is the contract given to Syscom Corporation in Noida to enrol people for Aadhar. Syscom, which was empanelled to collect Aadhar data in all states and union territories, is an Indian subsidiary of Safran. If biometric data collected by Syscom is de-duplicated by Morpho-Satyam, you have a situation where the agency collecting the data and the one verifying it to check possible duplication by the enrolment agency, are both owned by Safran. The biometric technology used belongs to L1 Identity Solutions, again owned by Safran.

Sachin Datta of Syscom, however, says there is no safety issue or conflict of interest. "Morpho and Syscom are two separate entities. The data we send to the UIDAI is encrypted and more than one company is involved in the de-duplication," he said.

Robert La Penta, the head and founder of L1 Identity Solutions, has been dogged by controversy. Before he founded L1, Penta worked for Loral Space and Communications, which he left as vice-president in 1996, two months after the crash of a Chinese rocket which used Loral's technology. After investigation, the US State Department accused Loral of passing sensitive material to the Chinese illegally and the company paid a fine of US $20 million in 2002 to settle the charges without admitting guilt.

"If you have given the job of data gathering, verification and storage to private entities with links to foreign intelligence agencies, it makes it childishly simple for these agencies to create fake identities of Indian citizens. What prevents any of these companies from enrolling people under multiple identities and clearing their biometric data when it is sent to them for de-duplication? 

Even more dangerous, if you are giving such private entities access to the database, foreign intelligence agencies could access information about every Indian citizen," said Colonel Mathew Thomas, a former army officer, who is familiar with intelligence operations.

UIDAI has made conflicting statements about whether these companies would have access only to biometric data for de-duplication or whether they will be provided with access to demographic data as well. The demographic data collected by various registrars include highly personal information like bank account numbers, e-mail Ids, mobile numbers etc. 

Mails sent to UIDAI officials, Safran and Mahindra Satyam asking for clarification about the data given to these companies and about the existence of technological safeguards or auditory mechanisms to prevent data theft and manipulation, were not answered.

A written reply from Accenture said that the company has been given only biometric data, but indicated that the UIDAI may not have insisted on any technological safeguards: "The Accenture Team does not have access to full data; we don't ever have an opportunity to touch a full record comprising of demographic and biometric data. Accenture is bound by the confidentiality obligations in the contract executed with UIDAI. Regarding the technological safeguards, please reach out to UIDAI directly."

Though Accenture is not known to be involved in any violation of government contracts in India, the company has been accused by the US government of taking kickbacks from other software companies for handing out US defence contracts. 

Accenture paid US $63.7 million to settle a lawsuit in an Arkansas court regarding the alleged kickbacks, but has denied any wrongdoing. Accenture originated as the business and technology consulting division of Arthur Anderson, before it split from Anderson in 2000. 

Arthur Anderson, one of the largest accounting firms in the US, surrendered its public accounting licence after it was implicated for its loose accounting in the Enron scandal, one of the biggest corporate frauds in American history. 

"Accenture has never engaged in the practice of public accounting, we were not involved in the Enron matter and from our establishment in 1989 until our incorporation in 2001, Accenture was a separate legal entity from Arthur Andersen and operated independently from that company," Accenture said in its written response.

On 16 November 2010, Nandan Nilekani was given the ID Limelight award by the ID World International Congress in Milan. Safran was one of the primary sponsors of the event. Some anti-UID activists point out that Morpho-Satyam was given the contact by UIDAI barely three months back. In 2008, the same award was given to Tariq Malik, deputy chairperson of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Pakistan's version of the UID project. The biometric solutions for NADRA are also being provided by L1 Identity Solutions.

"There is no doubt that it was highly unethical on the part of Nilekani to accept the award, " said Venkatesh Bubberjung, a Bangalore-based lawyer fighting a case to have the Aadhar project scrapped.

2114 - UID project: Accenture gets rap for shoddy work - Hindustan Times

Saturday, December 17, 2011

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times

Mumbai, December 17, 2011

Email to Author

The Maharashtra government has suspended Accenture from its panel of five consulting firms constituted to oversee roll out of the Unique Identification (UID) project. In a letter to the company from Nagpur, general administration department (IT) under secretary Dr Santosh Bhogle said the government had on November 26, 27 and December 12 brought to the notice of the company its poor performance but failed to see any improvement thereafter.

The letter stated that the principal consultant for UID Project remained absent for two weeks without any communication or notice. The government termed this "totally unprofessional" and said that it conveyed lack of commitment towards the project. "Even after repeated attempts to sensitise your organisation towards sub-standard work, we do not see any improvement," the letter stated.  It conveyed that  Accenture was being temporarily suspended from the panel of five consulting firms.

"The government has asked the firm to take necessary steps to improve management supervision... failing which we will be constrained to issue a blacklisting order," the letter warned.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/783491.aspx#

© Copyright © 2011 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.

1975 - Accenture Awarded Management Consulting Contract from Maharashtra Government - Market Watch

Nov. 14, 2011, 1:30 a.m. EST

Technology Solution to help Department of Labor manage laws, services for 20 million people

MUMBAI, India, Nov 14, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Government of Maharashtra has awarded Accenture ACN +0.55%  a three-year, management consulting and technology contract to help manage the administration of labor laws and create a management system to support services ranging from renewal of licenses to filing online grievances through an interactive portal.

The contract supports the Mahashramm initiative, designed to better manage and track services and payments through collaboration with banks for India's unorganized workforce* of 20 million people. The program is unique in size and scale and has been cited by the International Labor Organization (ILO)** as one of the leading best practices in the world.

Accenture will help implement a management framework and technology system to provide services, including registration and filing of applications, by building an online portal and creating a database to provide financial inclusion to unorganized workers using biometric signatures. This phase will be integrated with the Unique Identification Program (UID) of the Government of India.

Biometrics are unique physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, that can be used for automated recognition. Biometrics is the basis of identification services because they are reliable, convenient and extremely difficult and expensive to forge.

"Accenture is proud to have been selected by the Department of Labor to support such an ambitious and innovative project," said Krishna Giri, managing director for Accenture's Health & Public Service business in India. "We look forward to helping improve the way India's people can access information and interact with their government. We are delighted to partner with the government on its journey toward making Maharashtra a high performing state."

"The Department of Labor is glad to have Accenture to assist it in the implementation of the Labor Management System. This project aims at arriving at a win-win situation both for the employers, in organized and unorganized sectors, as well as employees. We hope for a meaningful association with Accenture, which will herald the delivery of this unprecedented and unique service which, I hope, will create a model of labor laws and decent working conditions for the unorganized and informal labor force not only in the State of Maharashtra, but also in the rest of the world," said Dr. Kavita Gupta, principal secretary of the Government of Maharashtra, Labor Department.

Learn more about Accenture's work delivering Public Service of the Future.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 236,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US $25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com

* Unorganized labor are workers who don't belong to or are not aligned with formal careers, trades or industries. They are "casual" workers, working less than 6 months a year in total.

**The ILO is an agency of the United Nations.

SOURCE: Accenture
       
        Accenture
        Puja Gupta
        DID +91 98 1888 3851
        Mobile: +91 981 3851
        puja.x.gupta@accenture.com

1786 - The problem with UID enrolment - DNA

Yogesh Pawar | Friday, November 11, 2011

Despite my problem with the UID (Aadhar) card scheme, I found myself at a Goregaon East registration centre spending a five-and-a-half painfully long hours! To put it mildly, the experience was akin to having a huge, barbed object thrust into an unmentionable orifice. An elderly neighbour, Sharad Sakhare, who uses a walker to get around asked me to go along with him.

His wife's no more and their only son's in Toronto. I showed him a scathing magazine report on how Accenture Services, one of the three companies awarded the Rs2,000 crore tender for generating a biometric database for the Unique Identification Authority of India,was facing allegations of kickbacks, delays and over-budgeting against it in the US. Sakhare simply said, "At my age I don't want to be stuck for my passport renewal or other stuff."
I tried another track from an email forward. The UID project, I told him, is out to repeat Hitler's predecessors. Germany always had lists of Jewish names even before the National Socialist German Workers' Party was formed after World War I. The Nazis got these lists with the help of a software major in the 'census' business. This includes racial census that not only counted Jews but also identified them.

In fact, at Washington's Holocaust Museum, there is an exhibit of a Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was responsible for organising the 1933 census that first identified Jews. Nothing convinced Sakhare and I had to go along. Located in a dilapidated school, the registration centre was an old unused room with discarded furniture where bandicoots kept company to pigeon droppings.

After we joined the queue around 9 am, the soft-spoken 19-year-old girl manning the centre realised that she could process only 40 forms a day by noon. My neighbour who was 40th in the list sat at a broken bench while I began looking at why it was taking so long.

Overwhelmed with both the technology and the tasks at hand, the clerk would miss something and kept cancelling entries in the system and start afresh. The printer would get jammed and she'd keep slapping it on the sides to make it work. And to make it worse, the power cord connecting the computers, finger imprint reader, retina pattern reader and the web cam kept falling off. Once she asked a woman in the queue to plug it properly. Only, the plug came off with one pin stuck in the board. And all work was stalled till an electrician from the colony could come and fix it. Gratis that is.

And one thought former Infosys boss and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India Nandan Nilekani would bring in some of his much feted managerial skills to what he keeps calling, "an exercise of a transformational sweep."

1773 - Accenture of UID fame received bribes in US - THE SUNDAY GUARDIAN

WEDNESDAY | NOVEMBER 09, 

ABHIMANYU SINGH  NEW DELHI | 6th Nov

Accenture Services, one of three companies responsible for the implementation of biometric solutions for India's Unique Identification programme, has paid $63.7 million to the American government to settle a case involving charges of accepting bribes and delays over budgeting and manipulating bids with regard to government contracts.

A man looks through an optical biometric reader during registration 

for Unique Identification cards in Amritsar in May. AFP

The lawsuit was filed in 2004 in the District Court of Arkansas. Two whistleblowers, Norman Rille and Neal Roberts, alleged that several IT companies, including Accenture Services, received kickbacks in the form of rebates to receive preferential treatment in the award of government contracts. They were advising the US government on which products provided by different IT companies they should use.

The Department of Justice, which became a party to the lawsuit in 2007, said in a press statement, "Kickbacks and bid rigging undermine the integrity of the federal procurement process. At a time when we're looking for ways to reduce our public spending, it is especially important to ensure that government contractors play by the rules and don't waste precious taxpayer dollars."

However, Accenture denied allegations of malpractice in a press statement, claiming that the American government was well aware of "alliance relationships in the IT industry and how they would benefit customers, vendors and the IT industry".

In the past, American agencies have terminated contracts with the company over performance related issues.

This newspaper sent a questionnaire to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairperson Nandan Nilekani, but he is yet to reply.
   
Karnataka High Court lawyer, Venkatesh Bubberjung has sent a legal notice to the UIDAI and the Indian government on this matter. "The UID is a process that reeks of corruption wherein already huge amounts are siphoned off by persons and organisations of dubious antecedents. (The process involves) huge international contracts that are illegal and entered into with organisations that are known for fraudulent practices," he said.

Accenture has awarded the contract for the purchase of biometric authentication devices to Sagem Morpho Security Pvt Ltd. A group called Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) has claimed that Sagem Morpho was given the contract because its parent company, Morpho (the Safran group) sponsored the ID World International Congress in Italy last year where Nilekani was given the ID Limelight Award. Morpho (Safran group) is a French multinational corporation specialising in ID credentials solutions.

An RTI application filed by CFCL revealed that companies are awarded UID contracts based on three criteria: First, the company should have a registered office in India. Second, if that is not the case, it should have a branch office, representative office, sales office or an office of its subsidiary company in India. Third, if these two conditions are not met, the company should submit an undertaking that it would have an office in India in the future.

Venkatesh Bubberjung is planning to file a civil suit against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, in their respective capacities as the chairperson and deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission and against Nandan Nilekani, who is the chairperson of the Unique Identity Authority of India. "On behalf of my client who is a retired defence scientist, I am filing a civil suit against Chairperson UIDAI, Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson of Planning Commission of India for initiating Aadhaar Project that is illegal, unlawful, (and) against the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution," said Bubberjung.

1751 - EXPOSED Data on a UID Partner - Open Magazine

27 Oct-2 Nov, 2011

KOCHI ~ Accenture Services, one of the three companies awarded the Rs 2,000 crore tender for generating a biometric database for the Unique Identification Authority of India, has charges of kickbacks, delays and over budgeting against it in the US. Just last month, Accenture arrived at a $ 63.7 million settlement over kickbacks it took for giving out government contracts.

 
Among the three companies given the contract by the UID Authority, Accenture has the majority of the work. Of 10 fingerprints collected, Accenture will get five, Mahindra Satyam three and L-I Identity Solutions two. The project will either run up to two years or until 200 million enrolments.
 

In a lawsuit filed in the eastern district court of Arkansas, the US government accused Accenture of receiving kickbacks, inflating prices and rigging bids on federal infotech contracts. 

Information technology development for various government departments had been outsourced to Accenture since 1998.
 

A suit filed on 4 December 2007 alleges, ‘Millions of dollars of kickbacks were sought, received, offered and paid between and among Accenture and its alliances violating False Claims Act and other federal statutes and regulations.’
 

Also, in September 2007, the General Assembly of Connecticut was informed that eight public entities had cancelled contracts with Accenture. Among them was the US Marine Corps, which had struck a six-month, $ 4.5 million contract with Accenture in July 2005 to design and implement a new global supply chain and maintenance system. 

Accenture, it was alleged, did not meet the contract’s cost, schedule and performance baselines.
 

A Karnataka High Court lawyer, BT Venkatesh, has sent a legal notice to the UIDA and Indian Government, asking for a rethink on the contract. He says, “The biometric identification of 200 million Indian citizens is very crucial data. How can the Government give such a task to a company that is not even able to win the trust of the government in its own country?”

1297 - The trouble with big brother’s eye - Source - Tehelka

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 20, Dated 21 May 2011

CURRENT AFFAIRS        
UID PROJECT

The company that will provide biometric solutions for the UID project employs former US intelligence officials. What does this mean for our security, asks Baba Umar

LAST YEAR, Tembhali, a hamlet of around 1,500 villagers in Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district, suddenly received a facelift — paved roads, painted walls and uninterrupted power supply. Not much was known about the village until 29 September when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi landed here to launch the world’s largest unique identity programme.

The idea was to create unique biometric identification cards for more than 1.2 billion Indians that will contain basic information such as name, a photograph, gender and date of birth plus a microchip to link the card to a biometric database that will have the cardholder’s fingerprints, iris scan, digital face image and address.

The project, which has already cost around Rs 3,170 crore, is slated to help the poor get access to welfare schemes and rid the PDS of grain diversion and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of pilferage.

Eye spy? 

A Delhi resident has his iris scanned
Photo: Shailendra Pandey

“The UID can be leveraged at various points in welfare schemes to improve the delivery systems by making them transparent and cost-effective,” says Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Director-General Ram Sewak Sharma.

However, for those working on issues of food security, migration, MGNREGA, civil liberties and human rights, the UID is an invasion of privacy, through which personal information will be stored in a database that could be used for profiling, tracking and surveillance.

And the involvement of companies such as American defence contractor L-1 Identity Solutions — which has names associated with the CIA and other US defence organisations in its top management — together with US-based Ernst & Young and Accenture raises queries about how much access they will have over Indian data.

“Can the government or the UIDAI assure the people that their details will not be shared with business enterprises, companies and political outfits?” asks Gopal Krishna of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties. Krishna, who has been aggressively campaigning against the UID, says the Nazi Party had hired IBM to profile people “leading to the Holocaust”. He says IBM was and remains in census business and is currently part of World Bank’s e-Transform Initiative of the developing world of which the UID scheme is a component.

Related
Why Nandan wants to tag You
UID is an Identity Crisis in the Making by Usha Ramanathan-Tehelka
Falling Between The Barcodes-Tehelka

The three foreign companies will be implementing biometric solutions for UIDAI that includes designing, supplying, installing, commissioning, maintaining and supporting the multi-modal automatic biometric identification subsystem.

AMONG THE names associated with L-1 Identity Solutions are former CIA director George Tenet and former Homeland Security deputy secretary Adm James Loy, also on the board of Lockheed Martin. The company’s links with the US military establishment is underscored by the fact that its board of directors include former Army Technology Science Board member BG Beck, former chairperson for the Secretary of the Army’s National Science Centre Advisory Board Milton Cooper.

It’s feared that the database can be used as a bulwark against India because all US based firms are subject to the Patriot Act that obligates American companies to share their data with Washington.

L-1 also mentions on its website its experience with Pakistan’s unique identity agency NADRA (National Database & Registration Authority), which, Krishna says ‘appears to be created on the same business model that is packed by people with intelligence and military links’.

“The UIDAI feared to have linked CIDR with the National Intelligence Grid — created to connect 21 existing databases with Central and state government agencies — and National Population Register and L-1 and Accenture who work in close affinity with US intelligence agencies,” he adds.

 Most Christian and Muslim Dalits are probably worse 

off than so-called Hindu Dalits

Defence experts opposed to the UID, claim that the PMO, defence sites, and more than a thousand government sites were attacked 4,000 times by China in 2010 alone “and things seem no different in this case”.

“The UIDAI has been foolish in its approach towards setting up the UID database,” says Mathew Thomas, former army officer and a vehement critic. “In this programme, fingerprint technology is provided by a US-based company whose directors are former CIA and FBI officers. The database is set up by Accenture. The database is to be linked to other databases like banks, phone companies, etc. Once a person hacks into the UID database, s/he can gain access to any other database. We are handing over data to anyone who would like to take it.”

“Did you hear about the incident in which 77 million Sony Playstation accounts were hacked? That’s why a London School of Economics report warned that such a central database would be a potential target for terrorists. If the purpose is to reduce corruption in welfare schemes, then why create a database of all people? This is where the government and the UIDAI are telling lies. It’s because if they talk about the real purposes of the UID, people would start resisting. It is meant to track and target people,” adds Thomas.

However, contrary to Thomas, others like Brig (retd) Rumel Dahiya of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis don’t find anything wrong with the involvement of foreign firms. “I am not discounting that certain amount of pilferage will take place,” he says. “However, the UIDAI has to make sure that the data being processed isn’t linked to servers abroad and it remains within an Indian system. Information of sensitive nature is protected, vetting of all machines from microchips is done, and physical check is ensured when people are working on a database.”

HOWEVER, UIDAI’S Sharma fends off all this criticism by saying that the “data collected for Aadhaar enrolment will be held by the UIDAI and will not be accessible by outside agencies. Any violation will invoke penalties and legal action. Profiling and tracking info and transaction data will not be collected. The UIDAI will not reveal personal information from the database.”

One of the strongest resistances to the UID comes from legal experts who have been questioning UIDAI’s constitutional validity. According to them, many issues including profiling, privacy safeguards, civil liberties protection, and e-surveillance have been totally neglected from the Bill.

“The UIDAI should have been preceded by a constitutionally-sound legal framework and parliamentary oversight. Both of these are missing, making it an unconstitutional project,” says Supreme Court lawyer Praveen Dalal. “Constitutionally, preparation of a legislation/Bill is the duty of the Indian government and it must be passed by Parliament. But in this case, an authority like UIDAI is suggesting the Bill which is itself devoid of any constitutional validity,” says Dalal, adding the enrolment procedures and the exercise of taking biometric details too is “unconstitutional”.

Noted Supreme Court lawyer Rajeev Dhawan believes that internally displaced and refugees “are likely to be harassed”. “If the UID carries with it any other info that is kept in the government databases, it would be an invitation to big brother governance,” he explains. In an earlier interview to TEHELKA (Why Nandan Wants To Tag You 6 November 2010), UID Chairman Nandan Nilekani had himself argued that India needs a well-debated and pervasive privacy law, not restricted to UID.

Still in control UIDAI Director-General Ram Sewak Sharma 

has rubbished fears of data loss
Photo: Shailendra Pandey

Many critics argue that the UID is mainly a security project. And as far as socio-economic benefits of the UID are concerned, the UIDAI itself has stated that it is only in the identity business and the responsibility of tracking beneficiaries and the governance of service delivery will remain with the respective agencies.

“The UID cannot address the bulk of the delivery problems in two of the biggest social sector programmes like MGNREGA and PDS,” says writer and activist Ruchika Gupta. Coupled with technological challenges, the fact that only about half the villages in the country have the mobile connectivity required for UID to work, that biometric readers are error prone, susceptible to damage — linking UID with social sector legislation is completely baseless.

“Without assessing the relationship between an individual and the State, the programme was advertised with the name that corruption is the fundamental problem, but they are handing over all the details to those very people who we are accusing of corruption,” says independent law researcher Usha Ramanathan.

Then there is a strong criticism of the credibility of the UIDAI’s claims in the field of social policy too. “Scrutinising the UIDAI’s documents reveals their poor understanding of how PDS and MGNREGA leakages occur and little evidence of creative thinking on plugging them,” says Reetika Khera, a development economist and assistant professor at IIT, Delhi. She has been critical of the UIDAI’s assertions that the scheme is voluntary. “The UIDAI is eager to enrol people. Till enrolment remains voluntary, people are likely to come in a trickle. To encourage them, government departments will make it a pre-requisite, by linking issue of new job cards to UID enrolment.”

Data collected for Aadhaar enrolment won’t be 

accessible to outside agencies,’ says UIDAI’s 

Sharma

Khera has a point. Because recently the district administrations in Mysore and Bengaluru initiated steps making UID numbers compulsory at various levels in state government offices. The move leaves no chance to stay away from the scheme.

Similarly, India’s national payment gateway, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) aims to link Rupay, its soon to- be-launched domestic payment gateway on the pattern of Visa and MasterCard, with the UID programme. The move will allow customers to use their UID numbers as their banking passwords. All this makes UID a compulsory card that will link with it a person’s other information too which is contrary to UIDAI’s policy.

Even as Rajana Sonawane of Tembhali, the first Indian to receive the UID card wonders what benefits the card will offer him, the arguments continue elsewhere about the efficacy of this unique project.

Baba Umar is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
babaumar@tehelka.com