13701 - Digital Native: Cause an effect - Indian Express

Digital Native: Cause an effect

Aadhaar is a self-contained safe system, its interaction with other data and information systems is also equally safe and benign.

 Domino effect: A causal link makes data collected by Aadhaar prone to misuse (Source: Getty Images)

Written by Nishant Shah | 

Updated: June 17, 2018 12:05:07 am

Statistically, it has been proven, that the consumption of ice cream in the country increases significantly in the summer months. In the same months, the number of housebreak incidents also increase. It might be possible, though ridiculous, to now make an argument that eating ice cream leads to increased frequencies of housebreakings, and, hence, sale and consumption of ice cream should be regulated more rigorously. The humour in this situation arises out of the fact that we know, at a very human level, that correlation is not the same as causation.

We know that just because two things happen in temporal or spatial proximity with each other doesn’t necessarily mean they are connected or responsible in a chain of events. This is because human communication is designed to make a distinction between cause-and-effect relationship and happened-together relationship between two sets of information.

However, when it comes to computation, things turn slightly different. Within the database logics of computation, two sets of data, occurring in the same instance, are subjected to a simple scrutiny: Either one of them is linked with the other, or, one of the two is noise, and, hence, needs to be removed from the system. Computation systems are foundationally anchored on logic. Within logical systems, all the events and elements described in the system are interlinked and have a causal relationship with each other. Computational learning systems, thus, do not have the capacity to make a distinction between causal and correlative phenomena.

This is why computation systems of data mining and profiling are so much more efficient than human cognition. Not only are these systems able to compute a huge range of data, but they are also able to make unprecedented, unforeseen, unexpected, and often unimagined connections between seemingly disparate and separate information streams. 

I present to you this simplified notion of computer logic because it is at the heart of the biometric identity-based debates around Aadhaar right now. 

Recently, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI, wrote an opinion piece that insisted that the data collective mechanisms of Aadhaar are not only safe but also benign. His opinion is backed by Bill Gates, who also famously suggested that “Aadhaar in itself” is not dangerous.

And, in many ways, Gates is right, even if Pandey’s willful mischaracterisation of Gates’s statement is not. For Gates, a computer scientist looking at the closed architecture of the Aadhaar system, it might appear, that in as much as any digital system could be safe, Aadhaar is indeed safe. In essence, Gates’s description was, that as a logical system of computational architecture, Aadhaar is safe, and the data within it, in their correlation with each other, does not form any sinister networks that we need to worry about.

However, Pandey takes this “safe in itself” argument to extend it to the applications and implementations of Aadhaar. 

He argues that because Aadhaar is a self-contained safe system, its interaction with other data and information systems is also equally safe and benign. In this, Pandey, either out of ignorance or willful mischaracterisation, confuses correlation with causality. He refuses to admit that Aadhaar and the biometrics within that are the central focal point around which a variety of data transactions happen which produce causal links between disconnected subjects.

Thus, the presence of a digital biometric data set might not in itself be a problem, but when it became the central verification system that connects your cellphone with your geolocation data, your presence and movement with your bank account and your income tax returns, your food and lifestyle consumption with your medical records, it starts a causal link between information which was hitherto unconnected, and, hence, considered trivial.

The alarm that the critics of Aadhaar have been raising is not about whether the data on Aadhaar is safe or not, but, how, in the hands of unregulated authorities, the correlations that Aadhaar generates and translates into causal profiles have dire consequences on the privacy and liberty of the individuals who carry the trace of Aadhaar in all facets of life. Pandey and his team of governors need to explain not the safety of Aadhaar but what happens when the verification information of Aadhaar is exploited to create non-human correlations of human lives, informing policy, penalisation and pathologisation through these processes.

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.

13629 - Globalise identity, not aadhaar: Using one single database and identity management scheme for everything will not work - Times of India

Globalise identity, not aadhaar: Using one single database and identity management scheme for everything will not work

May 31, 2018, 2:00 AM IST Eben Moglen in TOI Edit Page | Edit Page, India | TOI

By Eben Moglen and Mishi Choudhary

A couple of weeks back, Bill Gates committed his globe-girdling foundation to the goal of spreading Aadhaar to the world. This is a good idea wrapped up in a terrible idea.

Aadhaar’s premise – that the poorest of citizens has the most to gain from the efficiencies that strong, fast, inexpensive identity authentication offers in improving public services, payments, credit and healthcare – is undoubtedly correct. Aadhaar’s marketing – that these efficiencies have been achieved through the creation of one big, vulnerable database containing more than a billion peoples’ biometric identifiers – is a shoddy effort to ignore the increasingly obvious flaws in the system.

Because the premise of Aadhaar is correct, the Indian government has an enormous political stake in ignoring the flaws and shutting down public conversation. Globalising Aadhaar’s ambition is a worthy goal for the world’s social welfare policy makers, including the World Bank and Gates Foundation. Imitating a system that has barely reached version 1.0 and is already showing serious architectural flaws would be serious policy malpractice.

                            Illustration: Chad Crowe

Gates said that biometric identity authentication raises no privacy issues “in itself”, and went on in the next breath to say that every application built on top of it must be assessed individually for risks to privacy. Like TSB, the UK bank that ludicrously asserted before Parliament this month that its “basic banking engine” was working perfectly even though most of its customers could not access their accounts and some customers were able to access other peoples’, this idea that “the base is fine, it’s just everything else that might be broken” makes nonsense of any sane concept of technical architecture.

In theory, Aadhaar is indeed one base for a society wide digital infrastructure. Digital society requires reliable means of quickly and inexpensively asserting and confirming individual identity. The approach Aadhaar takes appears to be elegant and effective: collect everyone’s social and biometric identifiers (name, address, fingerprint, retinal data, eventually genomic sequence data), put them in one great big single database and provide a network access protocol to that database.

But this “one base for everything” approach contains both an architectural fallacy and a barrel full of unintended consequences. The rush to make Aadhaar mandatory for all sorts of social activities, from mobile telephone ownership to university enrollment, has been pressed on by a government eager to reap the theoretical advantages regardless of the burgeoning evidence of practical weakness. No reasonable evaluation of risks incident to security compromise and identity data loss has occurred. Implausibly, Aadhaar’s proponents have simply insisted that this one datastore will never be hacked or compromised, despite the overwhelming evidence that no data system (from the Swift system that ties together the world’s banks, to the security classification data on US federal employees, to UK national social security data) permanently and successfully resists intrusion.

What consequences will follow – and what measures of remediation will be possible – when a national-scale single-token identity store like Aadhaar is cracked, no proponent has explained. It will be as though we all used the same password on every website, and the list has gotten out all at once. Without a serious and complete explanation of the risks, their management, and the course of remediation after failure, no government should accept responsibility for the adoption of the technology.

In actual use, Aadhaar is presenting other operating flaws. Errors in biometric data acquisition in the field have left individuals who should be Aadhaar’s most important beneficiaries – those in receipt of public assistance – unable to receive subsistence benefits. The price at which parties can buy access to Aadhaar numbers in bulk has dropped low enough, according to press reports, to prove that leakage is occurring on a significant scale. Reports of false Aadhaar card scams are so frequent they no longer make the front page.

These difficulties are not merely “bugs in the system”. They are indicative of an underlying reality: using one single database and one single identity management scheme for everything from buying vegetables in the market to getting a passport will not work.

Neither overreaching government surveillance nor widespread criminality can be prevented if a society’s identity management structure is one big pile of infinitely valuable data surrounded by a macrocosm of arbitrary software. Aadhaar’s proponents have trumpeted the “open APIs” that can connect every Tom, Dick and Harry’s apps to the well-spring of government-managed identity. They have not, as they should, required that all programmes using the APIs be open source code, available for public inspection and auditing.

Privacy cannot be assured at all, illegal government surveillance cannot be prevented, and protection of the economy from widespread crime is impossible if government mandatorily collects information capable of compromising every citizen’s identity and then takes no responsibility for the management of risks downstream. As the Supreme Court considers the relationship between this technology and privacy rights of citizens, all parties – including billionaires from abroad – would benefit from some additional modesty.

It is right to begin learning how to bring the benefits of digital society to the entirety of the population, including by making digital identity a universal commodity. But we should be constantly improving not only the details but the fundamental design of our technology in light of experience. And we should not accept the present light-hearted “I’m just fine, it’s everybody else who has problems” attitude that Aadhaar’s public and private sector cheerleaders have adopted.

Eben Moglen is Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia Law School. Mishi Choudhary is legal director of Software Freedom Law Centre, New York

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

13532 - Access control: Why it makes sense for Gates to promote Aadhaar - Deccan Chronicle

Access control: Why it makes sense for Gates to promote Aadhaar

DECCAN CHRONICLE. | NAVEENA GHANATE

Published

May 14, 2018, 3:05 am IST

Gates is the man who built Microsoft Windows, among the world’s most vulnerable operating systems.

 Bill Gates is more concerned about the benefits his organisations like Microsoft or Gates Foundation can reap.

As concerns about Aadhaar grow with every passing day, leaving even fair-minded citizens wondering where we are heading with privacy and security in such a populous country, software giant Bill Gates has tried to use his “brand” to endorse Aadhaar. Unfortunately he seems to have failed to check on the committed values that India’s national ID was supposed to deliver.

His statement, “Aadhaar in itself doesn’t pose any privacy issue because it is just a bio ID verification scheme,” cannot be written off as ignorance or lack of research. There is a need to see Gates not as a celebrity, but as a businessman who owns a large corporation and is always in the race to lead business. Gates is more concerned about the benefits his organisations like Microsoft or Gates Foundation can reap. It is in his interest to help the World Bank, via the foundation, to replicate national biometric authentication systems in other developing countries, to further promote his “philanthro-capitalism”.

As we dig deeper, the situation gets even more intriguing because Microsoft is the system integrator to develop the Indian government’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform Swayam (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds). IT NPOs have criticised the awarding of the contract given to the US software major, as it is in “direct contrast” with government policy on open source software. Microsoft became the first global company to adopt Aadhaar as authentication for its services such as Skype-Lite, LinkedIn, and Project Sangam, among others. Aadhaar as an authenticator of Microsoft’s services will allow the latter to tap into the rapidly growing Internet users’ database in a largely mobile-first country, who might lack email IDs, which are essential identifiers as of now.

In addition, the government has begun talks with Google and Apple to allow Aadhaar-based authentication for users of their smartphones, which are increasingly enabling fingerprint authentication at a cheaper price. Here, Microsoft is leading efforts for fingerprint/biometrics-based authentication standardised by W3C and making it available on all browsers soon. Fingerprints and IRIS have already been attached to Aadhaar numbers, face recognition will be enabled from July and voice recognition may also soon be attached to Aadhaar data repositories.

The Gates Foundation is recognised as a philanthro-capitalist foundation because it has advocated applying Microsoft strategies to its philanthropic activities. The foundation, known for its ideological commitment to neo-liberal economic policies and corporate globalisation, is now focusing on funding the World Bank to replicate Aadhaar-style surveillance systems in other developing countries to take surveillance capitalism a step forward. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Gates should praise his friend Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), for helping corporates like Microsoft to monetise the data of Indian citizens.

Should a tech giant like Microsoft have access to the government database, it will be the winner among its competitors in a developing country like India, because it has data and data is the new oil. All this at the cost of citizens’ personal information that they voluntarily and, sometimes under the pressure of circumstances, handed over to the government.

Would Gates be willing to giving his retinal scan, fingerprints, and address to the government and private agencies, some of which will be made publicly available? The ID has become something similar to a bell for cats, considering the pressure to use it for every mobile connection, tax returns, government schemes, bank accounts, purchases and even to use mobile wallets. A project such as this, which would help corporations like Microsoft use surveillance capitalism to grow their businesses, is already being countered on social media.

How often was UIDAI questioned even when cyber security organisations kept throwing up challenges on the availability of Aaadhar data? The debate about privacy concerns is becoming meaningless because as we know, state and Central governments continue to build profound relations with conglomerates to reap immediate benefits, rather than promote the larger good.

Entities like Gates Foundation invest and nurture institutions which promote their neo-liberal policies to gain increased control over the market and reduce the state’s role in it. They build friendly relationships with the state and sell surveillance to governments in exchange for business-friendly regulatory policies. They would go to the extent of killing Constitutional institutions (Parliaments, judiciary), buy media, harass protesters (Twitter trolling is nothing), hijack elections, and undermine democracy.

Gates is the man who built Microsoft Windows, among the world’s most vulnerable operating systems. Given the several reports of Aadhaar data leaks, Gates endorsing Aadhaar is similar to international institutions like World Bank saying India’s economy is on track, though the public endures the effects of inflation.

In his book Hit Refresh, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pointed out that India’s Aadhaar identity system rivals the growth of other platform innovations like Windows, android or Facebook. It is apparent that Microsoft is applying Facebook’s strategy of partnerships and alliances with contenders to stifle competition.

While businesses are important for a country’s economy, Gates is trying to paint Aadhaar with a broad brush, ignoring underlying privacy concerns. Such information can be used to deny products, services or information, or help construct a data profile.

The fight against Aadhaar is not just about the right to privacy and data protection.

It’s about saving the democratic fabric of our country by not allowing greedy corporations and philanthro-capitalists hijacking information to create unaccountable private structures replacing existing Constitutional bodies.

Now, the world is aware of the dire consequences of having data and misusing it as Cambridge Analytica shuts shop. A knife is only as good as the one who wields it, and so is the case with data.

Tags: bill gates, aadhaar, microsoft

13492 - Know your Aadhaar BY JEAN DREZE - INDIAN EXPRESS

Know your Aadhaar

Bill Gates’s claim that it raises no privacy concerns is misleading. 

Crucial issues that have to do with confidentiality of data and

state surveillance are at stake.

Written by Jean Dreze | Updated: May 8, 2018 12:27:46 am

In the draft of the Aadhaar Act (known as ‘NIDAI Bill 2010’), demographic information was supposed to be confidential — authentication only consisted of a ‘yes/no’ response to a query whether a person’s biometrics matched the Aadhaar number being submitted. (Illustration: CR Sasikumar)

According to Bill Gates, privacy is not a concern with Aadhaar (‘Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates’, IE, May 3). This widely-quoted statement would have been more convincing if Gates had shown a clear understanding of the Aadhaar project. Instead, he revealed his innocence of it in the same discussion, for instance by stating that Aadhaar is “just a bio ID verification scheme”.

To be fair, what Gates actually said is that Aadhaar “in itself” does not pose any privacy issue. He added that Aadhaar applications would need to be scrutinised one by one for possible privacy threats. But anyone who has read the Aadhaar Act would understand that Aadhaar and its applications cannot be neatly separated in this way.

Even more confused is a recent submission to the Supreme Court by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi on behalf of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). In this submission, dated April 12, Dwivedi repeatedly creates the impression that identity information collected by the UIDAI is confidential. This is very misleading.

Under the Aadhaar Act, “identity information” consists of Aadhaar number, biometric information and demographic information. “Biometric information”, as of now, consists of fingerprints, iris scan and photograph, but its scope can be expanded at the UIDAI’s discretion. “Demographic information” refers to demographic details (name, date of birth, address, etc) collected at the time of Aadhaar enrolment. The term “personal information”, not used or defined in the Aadhaar Act, can be understood in more general terms as any information of a private nature.

Aadhaar raises at least four privacy concerns, explained below in a tentative ascending order of seriousness.

Confidentiality of core biometrics: The core biometrics (as of now, biometrics minus photograph) are supposed to be safely stored in the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) and not shared with anyone. Some IT experts, however, believe that it is only a matter of time until the CIDR is hacked. That would be a serious breach: If your biometrics are stolen, you would be vulnerable to identity fraud for life. Further, fingerprints are easy to clone or steal outside the CIDR (as Nandan Nilekani himself put it to a Financial Times reporter, “I can steal your fingerprint off your glass”). That, too, presents a threat of identity fraud, given the numerous uses of biometrics in the proposed Aadhaar eco-system.

Confidentiality of Aadhaar numbers: Aadhaar numbers are not supposed to be “displayed or posted publicly” (Aadhaar Act, Section 29(4)). However, this has happened many times, and keeps happening. When Aadhaar numbers are displayed along with other sensitive information such as bank account numbers, it makes the victims vulnerable to various types of fraud.

Sharing of demographic information: In the draft of the Aadhaar Act (known as “NIDAI Bill 2010”), demographic information was supposed to be confidential — authentication only consisted of a “yes/no” response to a query whether a person’s biometrics matched the Aadhaar number being submitted. The Aadhaar Act, however, now allows demographic information to be shared with the entity — say, a bank or telecom company — that requests authentication (Section 8). Further, there is very little protection against this information being shared or misused by the requesting entity, except for a weak “consent” clause whereby demographic information is supposed to be used only for the purpose to which the person has consented at the time of authentication. This is just a cosmetic safeguard. In effect, demographic information is up for grabs. The wide dissemination of demographic information will facilitate large-scale mining of all sorts of personal information by private businesses. It is well known that private businesses already thrive on this type of information for numerous purposes, from targeted advertisement and credit rating to manipulating elections (the recent Cambridge Analytica andFacebook affairs are just the tip of that mountain). Aadhaar is likely to take the mining of personal information — not just demographic information — to new levels. As someone put it in an insightful tweet, “data is the new oil and Aadhaar is the drill”.

State surveillance: By the same token, Aadhaar creates an unprecedented infrastructure of state surveillance. Aadhaar-enabled access to personal information will be even wider for the state than for private entities, because the state has access to numerous Aadhaar-linked databases including the Aadhaar numbers (not accessible, in principle, to private entities). For instance, the state can easily use Aadhaar to link our bank account details with travel details and phone records. Some state governments are already on the job under the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) project, which “integrates all the departmental databases and links them with Aadhaar number”, according to the SRDH websites. Intelligence agencies, quite likely, are not far behind. To this, the UIDAI responds that the UIDAI is “blind” by design and confines its work to authentication without collecting or collating personal data. This is neither here nor there: The danger of surveillance comes from the government, not the UIDAI specifically.

All this would be easier to swallow if the UIDAI had shown some sense of responsibility and accountability. Instead, it constantly denies the issues, hounds the whistle-blowers, and tries to confuse matters through relentless propaganda. The Aadhaar Act makes the UIDAI a law unto itself. An entire chapter of the NIDAI Bill, aimed at ensuring independent oversight of the UIDAI by a high-powered “Identity Review Committee”, was dropped — how and why one wonders — in the final version of the Aadhaar Act. And of course, under Section 47, no court is allowed to take cognisance of any offence under the Act except on a complaint made by the UIDAI. The unaccountable nature of the UIDAI, an authority of immense powers, reinforces and magnifies all the privacy concerns.

The writer is visiting professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University

For all the latest Opinion News, download Indian Express App

More From Jean Dreze

• Dissent and Aadhaar
  We have been numbed by a series of lies, myths and fictions about the project...
• Kashmir’s hidden uprising
  We know the Kashmir crisis. Or do we?..
• Book Review: The Voice of Reason
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13473 - Aadhaar gets a brand ambassador - #DailyDope - First Postr - You Tube

Aadhaar gets a brand ambassador - #DailyDope

Aadhaar has found what could be, its biggest ambassador, Microsoft founder Bill Gates. So impressed is Gates with Aadhaar that he is willing to finance the ...

13465 - Bill Gates, World Bank embrace Aadhaar technology amidst doubts in India - Domain-b

Bill Gates, World Bank embrace Aadhaar technology amidst doubts in India

04 May 2018

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a World Bank project to adopt India’s Aadhaar technology in other countries as it is worth emulating, a PTI report quoting Microsoft founder Bill Gates said on Thursday.

The 62-year-old multi-billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist said the Aadhaar technology does not pose any privacy issue and that its main architect Nandan Nilekani is also consulting and helping the World Bank on the project.

While more than a billion people in India have enrolled in Aadhaar, the world's largest biometric ID system, Gates said the technology is worth emulating by other countries as the benefits are huge.

"Yes, countries should adopt that approach because the quality of governance has a lot to do with how quickly countries are able to grow their economy and empower their people," Gates said in response to a question.

"We have funded the World Bank to take this Aadhaar approach to other countries," he said, adding that several countries, including some from India's neighbourhood, have approached New Delhi for assistance in this matter.

"Aadhaar in itself doesn't pose any privacy issue because it's just a bio ID verification scheme," Gates, the head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is reported to have said when asked about the concerns about privacy issues raised by certain quarters in India.

"The individual applications that use Aadhaar, you have to look and see what's been stored and who has access to that information. And so, application by application, you have to make sure that's well managed. In the case of the financial bank account I think it's handled very well," he said.

"(It uses) Aadhar to set up the accounts so that you can both get your cell phone and get your bank account," he added.

Aadhaar, he pointed out, was started before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into office, adding that it was very much to his credit that he was willing to embrace it.

"I'm both good friend and an admirer of Nandan Nilekani and some of the initiatives of digitisation efforts that can help with education that can help with governance," he said.

In his lecture on 'Technology for Transformation' organised by NITI Aayog on November 2016, Gates had said that Aadhaar is something that had never been done by any government before, not even in a rich country.

Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number for Indians, based on their biometric and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established in January 2009 by the Government of India.

UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey, in a recent Supreme Court hearing also defended the technology saying, “It would take more than the age of the universe to break one encryption.”

But there have been flaws in the method of data collection and the employment of private agencies by UIDAI.

Reports, meanwhile, cited a recent report by digital security company Gemalto, which predicts that 3.6 billion people around the world will carry some form of national electronic ID card by 2021.

In January this year, 20 countries, including Russia, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia indicated their initial interests in adopting Aadhaar technology in their own territories.

The Indian government is also reported to be promoting the UID model overseas with the facilitation support of the World Bank.

The Chinese government is planning to introduce Social Credit System, which will rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 billion citizens on the basis of daily online activities, social media posts, and tax payments.

While everything else seems to be at the place, it is still difficult to explain the recent data breaches and the privacy concerns associated with the technology.

13449 - Aadhaar Technology Is Worth Emulating: - INC 42

Aadhaar Technology Is Worth Emulating: 

Bill GatesThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Has Funded The World Bank To Take Aadhaar To Other Countries

Meha Agarwal

May 3, 2018 3 min read
INC42 STAFF

While Aadhaar hearing at Supreme Court enters its fourth month and the country is busy analysing the data breach speculations, the Microsoft Chief Bill Gates has termed Aadhaar technology to be worth emulating for other countries.

As per reports, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the World Bank to take this approach to other countries as well. “Nandan Nilekani, Infosys founder who is considered as the chief architect of Aadhaar technology, was consulting and helping the World Bank on the project,” Bill Gates said in a recent media interaction.

“The benefits of that (basic ID — Aadhaar) are very high. Countries should adopt that approach because the quality of governance has a lot to do with how quickly countries are able to grow their economy and empower their people,” Bill Gates added.

Bill gates further defended Aadhaar technology on privacy issues and stated that being just a bio ID verification scheme, Aadhaar poses no threat.


RELATED STORIES:
2 Days, 3 Leaks: Who Needs To Break 'The 5 Ft Thick Wall' Of UIDAI If Aadhaar Data Is Available Online?

“The individual applications that use Aadhaar technology, you have to look and see what’s been stored and who has access to that information. And so, application by application, you have to make sure that’s well managed. In the case of the financial bank account I think it’s handled very well,” he said.

It is to be noted, that UIDAI Chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey, in a recent Supreme Court hearing also stated that “It would take more than the age of the universe to break one encryption.”

Earlier in January 2018, 20 countries including Russia, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia indicated their initial interests in adopting Aadhaar technology in their own territories.

Inc42 also reported that in order to promote the UID model overseas with the facilitation support of the World Bank, Government of India has formed a body comprising Ministry of External Affairs, Department of Information Technology and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

However, Bill Gates beliefs have been continuously refuted with unending data breaches under Aadhaar. A day earlier, reports surfaced that aadhaar information through EPFO has been leaked, after previous reports of data leak of 8.9 Mn people which came to light through an Aadhaar whistleblower Srinivas Kodali, who shared the screenshots of Aadhaar data details of MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) beneficiaries.

While the talks erupt for the global level adoption of identity like Aadhaar, a recent report by digital security company Gemalto predicts that 3.6 Bn people around the world will carry some form of national electronic ID card by 2021.

The digital identity extreme is being pushed by the Chinese government which is planning to introduce Social Credit System, which will rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 Bn citizens on the basis of daily online activities, social media posts, and tax payments.

While everything else seems to be at the place, it is still difficult to explain the recent data breaches and the privacy concerns associated with the technology. With million dollar funds and data of 1 Bn+ Indians at stake, the Bill Gates statements have been a refreshing stance for the Aadhaar supporters. But will this lead way to a positive stand from the Supreme Court as well its something which cannot be predicted for now.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.

13442 - Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates - Indian Express

Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates

When asked about privacy concerns that have dogged the unique identification project, Gates said the applications that access the Aadhaar database must be closely scrutinised.

By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Published: May 3, 2018 2:01:00 pm

Bill Gates lauded PM Modi for willing to embrace the 12-digit unique identification system.

Aadhaar does not pose any privacy risks and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the World Bank to implement this system in other countries as it is worth emulating, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said. The 62-year-old multi-billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist revealed that Nandan Nilekani, who is considered as the chief architect of Aadhaar, was assisting the World Bank on the project.

“The benefits of that (Aadhaar) are very high,” he told PTI. “Yes, countries should adopt that approach because the quality of governance has a lot to do with how quickly countries are able to grow their economy and empower their people. We have funded the World Bank to take this Aadhaar approach to other countries.”

When asked about privacy concerns that have dogged the unique identification project, Gates said the applications that access the Aadhaar database must be closely scrutinised. “Aadhaar in itself doesn’t pose any privacy issue because it’s just a bio ID verification scheme. The individual applications that use Aadhaar, you have to look and see what’s been stored and who has access to that information. And so, application by application, you have to make sure that’s well managed. In the case of the financial bank account I think it’s handled very well,” he said.

Observing that Aadhaar was started before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into office, Gates said that it was very much to his credit that he was willing to embrace it.

“I’m both good friend and an admirer of Nandan Nilekani and some of the initiatives of digitisation efforts that can help with education that can help with governance,” he said.

In his lecture on ‘Technology for Transformation’ organised by NITI Aayog on November 2016, Gates had said that Aadhaar is something that had never been done by any government before, not even in a rich country. More than a billion people in India have enrolled in Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric ID system. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established in January 2009 by the Government of India.

with PTI inputs

For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App

© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd

12395 - India’s education system needs to be far better than it is today: Bill Gates - TNN

India’s education system needs to be far better than it is today: Bill Gates

TNN | Updated: Nov 17, 2017, 08:07 IST

HIGHLIGHTS

• On factors holding India back, Gates said, "My biggest disappointment is the education system. I do want to create higher expectations about it.”
• On Swachh Bharat, he said “Building toilets is like opening savings a/cs. The real challenge is getting people to use them.”
• On Aadhaar privacy issue: It's just a 12-digit lie-detector system. Privacy issues can come up with the apps that get built on top of it, Gates said.

TOI Guest Editor Bill Gates , who was the world's richest man for almost two decades and is still its foremost philanthropist, talks about public health, technology and ideas that could change the world 

He may have recently been replaced as the world's richest man by Jeff Bezos+ , but meeting Bill Gates is still an immensely enriching experience. 

The famed intellect is as rapier-sharp as ever, and his eyes light up with an endearing nerdish delight as he passionately holds forth on potentially life-changing ideas. He remains intensely focused and driven, but also exhibits an unexpectedly impish sense of humour. 

There are many legendary tales of unprepared Microsoft employees being subjected to severe tongue lashings by an acerbic Gates when he ran the software giant. So, it was with a degree of anxiety that senior editors of The Times of India assembled on Thursday to show Gates the articles that had been commissioned by him earlier when he agreed to serve as TOI Guest Editor. Gates went through the articles very carefully, and there was an audible exhalation of relief when he pronounced himself satisfied. "I'm glad you've got the bit about the new three-drug combination being used to treat elephantiasis," he said. 

"The two-drug combination requires five rounds and reduces the disease by 60-80% whereas the new three-drug combination has been shown to reduce microfilariae by 99% with the first dose itself. The triple-drug therapy is one of the most exciting things in the world of global health. India is one of the first places where we are going to go big on it. All three drugs are donated...so the donor money and government money all goes towards paying workers to go out there and distribute the drugs and then double check the quality of those campaigns. We are taking a lot of help from people doing the polio programme, because they have got such great results." 

Since he devotes so much time to India, does he feel that there are any specific factors holding the country back? "Most trends are positive, but my biggest disappointment when it comes to India is the education system. It should be far better. I don't want to be critical, but I do want to create higher expectations about it." 

Would the Gates Foundation+ consider expanding beyond health into education? "We can't do everything. Most of India's own philanthropists have picked education as a high priority and I'm very glad about that," he said emphatically. 

Read also: India needs to give a strong start to every child 

Bill Gates is known to take an active interest in sanitation, so what does he think of the Swachh Bharat programme+ ? "Well, building toilets is like opening savings accounts. The real challenge is getting people to use them," he quipped. "Part of our Swachh Bharat partnership with the government is to try and make sure that the toilets that are built are not so bad that you'd rather not use them. The first stage is behaviour change. In some parts of India, it's worked really well, in some parts not as well. Once a village passes the view that nobody should be doing this (open defecation), then it tends to stay. The nice thing is that if you intervene for just a few years then sometimes it becomes the expectation. So that's behaviour change and a lot of donors are doing that now." 

He paused to issue a warning that his response was about to get quite graphic. Assured that this was not a problem, he cheerfully plunged right in. "Now, what do you do about faecal waste? It either just builds up, so that the toilet becomes unusable, or you can have a truck come and get it. But then they just go and dump it into the river or somewhere. But five years from now, we are going to have a new toilet which actually, essentially burns the waste in the toilet. That's the dream, to re-invent the toilet. 

Read also: Why millionaires are giving away their wealth 

Right now, the same pipes that take out water also take out sewage, and the Ganga is Exhibit A of what happens as a result. If you had to build pipes that bring water in and sewage out in all the cities of India, it's never going to happen, because of the sheer cost involved. So we need to invent a toilet that is cheap, doesn't stink, and is as good as a flush toilet — that burns locally with no piping...In the next two or three years, we will have pilot units that are in the thousands, but to make a difference on this you have to be in the tens of millions. The trick is, it has to be dry enough to burn, and then you're left with water, which you can boil. The dry matter gives you energy but you have to use that energy very efficiently to be able to boil the wet part." 

But how does one achieve the separation of, er, the wet and dry parts, we asked. "You use a mix of chemicals and mechanical engineering to separate them," he explained patiently. "So you can have a pump and force the dry part through, and dewater it quite mechanically. Sanitation is highly variable in terms of how wet or dry it is...At the shared toilet level, we already have some good solutions, but we need to take them down to the individual level, and hopefully we'll get them in place in five years." 

Read also: Filariasis — The epidemic you don't know about 

We couldn't resist asking him about a project he's invested in, which converts human excreta into potable water. He recently drank a glass of water that was produced as a result. How was the experience? "It was as clean as the specification for US drinking water," he replied. "There's a large-scale processing machine that costs about $200,000, which is about a factor of ten cheaper than it has been in the past. It boils the water twice, and runs it through filters, so it's perfectly safe to drink. Today, brown water is mostly used to water lawns, but sometimes that can backfire because in some parts of the US, they were watering lettuce with it and that caused some infections." 

Since technology has been such a large part of his life, we asked him what he thought of Aadhaar and privacy concerns. "I haven't read the recent Supreme Court judgement but if you ask me, should there be a right to privacy, the answer is yes, of course. At the same time, I don't think Aadhaar itself intrudes on privacy. Aadhaar is just a 12-digit lie detector. You may claim to be someone and Aadhaar can tell if you're speaking the truth or lying. Yes, there are many applications linked to Aadhaar and there are records related to them. Privacy issues can come up with the applications that get built on top of Aadhaar. But none of the records reside on the Aadhaar system itself. The irony is that I often tell Nandan (Nilekani) that if I had built Aadhaar, I would have created it with many more inbuilt capabilities, but Nandan was very careful about not intruding on privacy." 

'Satya is a very zen person... in that respect, he's better than I was' 

Satya Nadella, only the third CEO in Microsoft's 42-year history, had been TOI Guest Editor barely a fortnight ago. What were his impressions of Nadella, we asked Gates (62), who stepped down as the first CEO in 2000 (he still serves as a board member and technology adviser).

"I still care very deeply about Microsoft and devote about 15% of my time to it. Satya is very good at extracting the maximum value from my time and making sure I look at all the important things. He's very thoughtful, good at working with people, working through problems in a calm sort of way. He's a very Zen person — in that respect, he is better than I was. I was too emotional about something not going too well."

Gates once famously remarked that in his youth, he probably overvalued intelligence. What did he mean by that? "See, there's the kind of intelligence where I give you a 500-page book on, say, geography and you memorise it and tell me everything I need to know about weather systems.

TOP COMMENT

We all know our education system sucks. If Kejriwal went to IIT then god bless us.

Harpreet Singh

When I was younger, I thought that was all you needed. If you understand physics, how hard can it be to run a team? The idea that some skills, like managing people, are not correlated with scientific IQ — in fact some of them are negatively correlated to scientific IQ — took me a while to figure out.

It's very rare to have people who can combine these skills. Satya is one of them," signed off Gates. 

In Video: Exclusive: Bill Gates on the importance of India in his career, Aadhaar and Donald Trump

11288 - 5 questions for the anti-Aadhaar brigade - Your Story

5 questions for the anti-Aadhaar brigade

Ritesh Dwivedy

8 MAY 2017

Aadhaar is a unique indigenous innovation that empowers every Indian by providing them with a secure and verifiable identity. Aadhaar is going to be the backbone of India becoming a developed country, and is receiving global acclaim from entities like Bill Gates, The Economist, the World Bank, Raoul Pal, and others.

And yet, we hear so much anti-Aadhaar news. So why would anyone oppose Aadhaar? There are people with vested interests or extreme ideology – they do not want corruption to go away, they are middlemen who have been making crores through corrupt practices, or they believe in extreme anti-state ideologies.

A long road to development and progress. (Image: ShutterStock)

Given all the benefits of Aadhaar, it’s difficult to understand their thinking! Here are 5 questions for the anti-Aadhaar brigade:

How many more years do you want India to remain a ‘developing’ nation?

India has the tag of developing nation for decades now. Everyone acknowledges that India has potential. For one reason or another, we have not reached that potential. Even Sri Lanka is all set to become a developed country very soon. This should be a wake-up call for us.

India cannot become developed without taking along the lowest strata of its citizens. Only 20 percent of government aid actually reaches them. Aadhaar helps 100 percent of the aid reach the right person through Direct Benefit Transfer, removing any scope for corruption at various levels. And this is just one aspect of the benefits of Aadhaar.

Hence the question to the anti-Aadhaar brigade, how many more years do you want India to remain a ‘developing’ nation?

Why are you silent on all the benefits we are seeing as a result of Aadhaar?

The rural women in Rajasthan are asking for Aadhaar. Aadhaar is saving the taxpayers crores of rupees. Aadhar is helping lost children get reunited with their kin. Banking facilities are reaching remote villages. Loans can be offered to people in minutes, saving them from the exorbitant rates of the local money lender. Opening bank accounts and getting SIM cards has become instantaneous and cheap. Why are you silent on all these benefits?

Why are you misleading the Indian public about Aadhaar through fear-mongering and sensationalism?

All sorts of extreme arguments around security are being made to oppose Aadhaar. However, the fact remains that Aadhaar, due to its biometric authentication, is more secure than other forms of identity, including the Social Security Number used in the United States.

People may have been alarmed by the fear-mongering and sensational reporting around some Aadhaar ‘data leaks’ or more accurately, ‘data disclosures’. In fact, people’s digital identity remains secure!

The data disclosures reveal Aadhaar numbers and demographic information. This alone cannot be used to steal your digital identity. Just as someone knowing your bank account number or debit card number, does not mean they can steal your money. And the fact remains, not a single leak of Aadhaar biometric information has been reported till date!

Why are you willing to give biometrics to foreign govts and corporations, but not to your own govt?

In today’s age, giving biometrics is a standard part of visa applications and unlocking modern smartphones! This data resides with foreign governments and corporations, Indian citizens have no control over its usage.

On the other hand, biometric information in India is only stored with UIDAI with strict protection of the law. So why is it that the anti-Aadhaar brigade is ready to give biometrics to foreign governments and corporations without any control on their use, while opposed to providing the same to the Indian government for development of the nation?

Why are you opposed to using technology to benefit the nation?

Any technology has its set of benefits and risks. For India to progress, we must embrace technology and use it in the right way. This requires a sensible discussion by all.

Bank account data, PAN data, credit card information, and user information from online accounts, etc. have all been leaked in the past or have seen frauds, yet we have not stopped using online banking, abolished the PAN system, dismantled credit cards, or disconnected from the internet.

So let us stop opposing the use of technology when it benefits the nation. Instead, let us make constructive arguments and support all efforts to improve the Aadhaar system.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

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https://yourstory.com/2017/05/response-to-questions-by-pro-aadhaar-brigade/

[Aadhaar debate] Response to the questions raised by supporters

• THEJESH GN 10 MAY 2017

This is a response to the questions raised by Ritesh Dwivedy published here called 5 questions for the anti-Aadhaar brigade. It’s also available on UIDAI website.

Same or similar questions have been asked and answered before at many venues. You probably didn’t get a chance to read them. Hence I am answering them here. I will try to keep it short and to the point.

First off, I believe the title of the article is misleading. The article is not like a question paper as the title suggests. It’s more like a ‘Guidebook to cracking IIT/JEE’. It has frequently asked questions and canned answers by the author. Maybe it’s time for the guidebook authors to look for the not-so-frequently asked questions. That would make everyone think.

Let’s start with the introduction. The author writes: “And yet, we hear so much anti-Aadhaar news. So why would anyone oppose Aadhaar? There are people with vested interests or extreme ideology – they do not want corruption to go away, they are middlemen who have been making crores through corrupt practices, or they believe in extreme anti-state ideologies.”

I started reading the article thinking it will lead to a good discussion about tech, policy, privacy, and social impact etc. But if someone starts an introduction with blaming the opposition and calling them supporters of corruption, it doesn’t instill confidence about the quality of questions. I was kind of disappointed with the questions. But then I choose to answer because it can help. Here are my responses to the questions.

“Q1: How many more years do you want India to remain a ‘developing’ nation?”

ANS: I want India to be developed country from tomorrow. There you have my answer.

Now in your canned answer, you say we can’t become a developed country without taking everyone along with us. I agree. You also suggest DBT makes 100 percent “aid” reach the right person. But you conveniently forget not every “aid” can be delivered to a bank account.

Let’s take one simple example of PDS. How will Aadhaar make sure the person who is under PDS+Aadhaar gets 100 percent of the rice he is promised and the quality he is promised. At most, Aadhaar can make sure the right person signed up or was present at the delivery spot. It can’t guarantee anything else. It can’t guarantee timeliness, quantity, quality, or absence of bribery. Sorry, the reason you gave is not completely applicable. To burst your bubble, just a unique identity is not going to make India developed.

“Q2: Why are you silent on all the benefits we are seeing as a result of Aadhaar?”

ANS: We do recognise the benefits but with an eye for detail.

In the canned answer, you give examples how the Aadhaar is beneficial. You didn’t link them to the sources. Here are a few links with a counter view.

• How private companies are using Aadhaar to try to deliver better services (but there’s a catch)
• By making Aadhaar mandatory, Delhi’s government schools are shutting their doors to migrant children
• Aadhaar trouble: How a woman’s wages under MGNREGA were transferred to someone else’s account
• Dissent and Aadhaar

There are literally hundreds. Just Google. Not sure how you came to this conclusion.

We agree there are benefits from a unique identity and hence from Aadhaar too. We also know benefits always come with the cost. I would like to see both and then make an informed decision.

“Q3: Why are you misleading the Indian public about Aadhaar through fear-mongering and sensationalism?”

ANS: No we aren’t.

In your canned answer, you call “dataleaks” as data disclosures and also make a claim that “In fact, people’s digital identity remains secure.”

Since you have not gone into details, I will do that. Let’s take an example from the report Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information. The website of Chandranna Bima Scheme by Govt. of Andhra Pradesh publishes partial Aadhaar numbers, name, father’s/husband’s name, age, caste, mobile number, gender, partially masked bank account number, IFSC code, bank name, and details of the nominee etc.

I was especially disappointed with this question because you also head an online startup. Talk to your security team and see how much information they think is enough to conduct an effective social engineering attack.

Many transactions can be done with just Aadhaar number and OTP. Makes social engineering easier. In the meantime ask your startup’s security team how happy they or your customers will be if their data (of similar type) leaks. Security is not just about keeping password or biometrics safe.

You probably know the after effects of Ashley Madison data breach. Now imagine the kind of effect if the HIV/AIDS patient’s profile data along with Aadhaar number leaks. With Aadhaar, they can be uniquely identified. So again it’s not always about safe biometrics.

There is much more to the security and privacy argument. I would suggest you read this post on Reddit which explains other aspects which I have not gone in detail here.

“Q4: Why are you willing to give biometrics to foreign govts and corporations, but not to your own govt?”

ANS: We have, for example, for the passport. Important terms to know are purpose, choice, and consent.

A very popular question on social media is – ‘How can you give biometrics for the US visa but not to your own government.’ But it’s important to remind everyone that one needs to have a passport before getting a visa.

Everyone who has a passport has given their biometrics to the government. Again, the purpose of the collection is clear and is by choice.

You also talked about the biometrics on phone. Now to assume everyone has a phone or has a phone with biometrics capability is a little too much to assume. Many of us don’t have a phone with biometrics. Happy to announce I don’t need a phone with biometrics to pay taxes.

You also talk about, and I quote, ”control over its usage” and “strict protection of the law”. Here you talk about the control over data and usage. Under Aadhaar Act citizen, citizens don’t have any legal rights to the data. If it is leaked or misused I am not considered an aggrieved party. I cannot sue UIDAI or others involved. That is the kind of protection I get. Of course, there is also the “National Security” clause under which all the data, including authentication records (which they save), can be shared. We need a complete and separate article on that. So I am going to leave it at that.

“Q5: Why are you opposed to using technology to benefit the nation?”

ANS: No we aren’t. You say, and I quote, “Bank account data, PAN data, credit card information, and user information from online accounts, etc. have all been leaked in the past or have seen frauds, yet we have not stopped using online banking, abolished the PAN system, dismantled credit cards, or disconnected from the internet.”

Everything mentioned here can be replaced or I can get rid of the account (except PAN). I can also sue people responsible for it for damages. But in the case of Aadhaar, I can do neither.

It’s also an interesting question. Because as part of this question you expect “a sensible discussion by all” and “constructive arguments”. Now go back to your introduction paragraph see if it’s sensible or constructive to call the critics as corrupt, middlemen or extreme.

To answer your question.

There are many technologies that are built with the aim of building the nation. But not everything with good intention can benefit the people of this nation.

We think the way Aadhaar and its ecosystem is today is not beneficial to Indians given the risks. It is also important to know technology can’t solve all problems.

Hope my answers helped you. Ask more questions.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

4853 - Digital identification project 'to benefit India's poor' - SBS Australia

17 OCT 2013 - 10:59AM

Digital identification project 'to benefit India's poor'

By Ron Sutton  Source World News Australia Radio

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

Nandan Nilekani has become a billionaire through his success in India's IT, or information technology, industry.

But he has his eye on a much bigger prize that, he believes, can revolutionise his country.

(Click on audio tab above to listen to item)

It's a program called Aadhaar, or Foundation, and this week he's in Australia as a guest of the University of Melbourne's Australia India Institute to tell the story.

To paraphrase Nandan Nilekani, he knows Bill Gates and he is no Bill Gates.

But the billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist has indeed been praised as the Bill Gates of India, and the head of the Australia India Institute is not letting him off so easily.

Yes, says University of Melbourne professor Amitabh Mattoo, Bill Gates is Bill Gates and Nandan Nilekani is Nandan Nilekani.

But, he says, the digital identification project Mr Nilekani is engineering across the world's second most populous country ranks with modern man's biggest achievements.

When complete, the project is designed to give even the poorest, most invisible of India's 1.2 billion people a 12-digit ID linking them all into public services for the first time.

"Sending a man to the Moon required that kind of leap of faith and imagination -- and the kind of ambition that NASA had when it sent Neil Armstrong and his colleagues to the Moon. Or, within the context of India, trying to get rid of polio required immunisation on a huge scale, and that happened."

Nandan Nilekani, in Australia this week for a speech at the Australia India Institute, put the dream of unique digital IDs in writing in his 2008 book "Imagining India".

The book detailed his vision for renewing the nation.

But he gives credit to the Indian government, saying it too began working on the idea as early as 2006.

Professor Mattoo suggests the credit lies somewhere in between the two of them, but says it required someone with Nandan Nilekani's imagination and leadership to pull it off.

Before being named head of the government's new Unique Identification Authority of India to run the daunting project, Mr Nilekani had co-founded the IT services company Infosys.

With his IT and then philanthropy backgrounds, he looked at his country, home to one in three of the world's poor, and saw a land where everyone could help or get help.

Hence, the digital ID program, known as Aadhaar, or Foundation, that Mr Nilekani depicts, above all, as empowering.

"It is a huge project for social inclusion, because having a basic identity that you can use to verify who you are, wherever you are, is a very, very powerful and empowering idea. And there still are a large number of Indian residents who don't have any document about themselves, and giving them this basic identity which allows them to travel to work, et cetera, is a hugely empowering thing."

The ID number can become a key to accessing anything from welfare benefits, like cheap transport or rice and cooking fuel, to mobile phones and so-called micro-ATMs.

Workers known as business correspondents take the five-centimetre ATMs into villages, verify any requested money is in a person's account, then dispense it then and there.

At present, two in five rural Indians have no access to banking.

Mr Nilekani says more than 440 million people have received their ID numbers and the target is to reach half the population by the middle of next year.

At the Australia India Institute, Amitabh Mattoo says it all fits the philanthropist's idea that Internet technology has the potential to make the world a more level playing field.

"If you read The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman's book 'The World Is Flat,' the title is taken from a conversation that he had with Nandan, where Nandan Nilekani talked with him about the IT revolution. It's really making the world much more flat, in the sense that those hierarchies are going away and you're much more equal."

Estimates suggest nearly one in two Indian babies born today has no birth certificate, just a hint at the obstacles facing the digital ID program.

But Mr Nilekani says, every day, the program's 25,000 enrolment stations are enrolling about a million people.

And he says the IDs can play a major role in reducing India's legendary corruption.

"Many of the databases which have beneficiaries, like a list of people who have scholarships, or a list of people who have pensions, or a list of people who have LPG gas connection, these lists often have what are called ghosts and duplicates. They have people who don't exist, or they have people who are on the list more than once, and the lack of a unique number essentially prevents you from identifying who are the beneficiaries and whether they're unique. And, therefore, what the Aadhaar system does, because it gives a unique ID to everyone, it automatically allows you to eliminate ghosts and duplicates from your database. And that itself reduces diversion of material, because now you can make sure that it goes only to genuine people. And, in many projects, the amount of such duplication and all that is up to 10, 20, 30 per cent."

The other side of such a project, of course, is whether the government is creating a tool that will let it intrude on its residents' privacy.

Critics say the project is dangerous, that the number, linked to a person's demographic and biometric information, could fall into the wrong hands or simply the wrong use.

India's Supreme Court recently ruled the government cannot make the digital ID mandatory for accessing public services and subsidies.

Nandan Nilekani insists it is neither the intent nor capability of the program to intrude on people's privacy and says what he calls the common man in India understands that very well.

"The intent is a very, very noble intent. It's not really meant to, you know, spy on people or something. It's really meant to make people's lives easier. We also have taken a lot of care to make the design of it as secure as possible -- we don't collect too much information, we only collect basic information for identity, we only use it for authentication, only a resident can authorise his details to be shared. So a lot of things were done in the design of this which make it a very, very secure system."

Mr Nilekani suggests the digital ID program is merely the beginning, that like the development of the internet and GPS, it can become the hub for a thriving IT industry in India.

He likes to say the GPS answers the question "Where am I?" while the ID program answers "Who am I?"

At the Australia India Institute, Amitabh Mattoo has no qualms about the worth of that program -- or about the common ground of Nandan Nilekani and Bill Gates.

"Bill Gates is Bill Gates, and Nandan Nilekani is Nandan Nilekani. They are two separate individuals who really are doing their share to make the world a better place."