13685 - Aadhaar Critics are not Ludites - National Herald

Aadhaar critics are not luddites


VIDYUT GORE

Published: Jun 14th 2018, 12.14 PM


              Photo courtesy: Twitter/@ceo_uidai
      File photo of UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey

UIDAI chief writes that the fear of a threat to privacy because of the use of core biometrics in Aadhaar is exaggerated because biometrics are not secret information like PIN or password

The CEO of UIDAI, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, has written yet another opinion piece in a newspaper, which bravely argues against established tech security practices.

While Aadhaar FAIL generally tends to ignore individuals and their opinions, it is important to examine the claim and competence of a highly placed public servant, who arguably occupies one of the most important positions related to technology in India.

The UIDAI chief writes that the fear of a threat to privacy because of the use of core biometrics (fingerprints and iris) in Aadhaar is exaggerated because biometrics are not secret information like PIN or password. People, he went on to add, must know that even the theft of biometrics in a rare eventuality will not put one to the same level of risk as the leakage of a password.

A threat to privacy, however, is not about whether the information is secret or not. It is about having the choice of what information we grant and to whom. The residents of India are not criminals that their rights must be waived away and they be compelled to grant access to their biometrics, and that too, to an insecure system, because of a system whose compliance with the Constitution of the country itself has been questioned.

This, in fact, has been repeatedly brought up by the judges in the Supreme Court itself, and Pandey had the opportunity of being the only non-lawyer allowed to present his perspective directly to the judges themselves. The judges did not appear convinced and continued to see the invasion of privacy as an important issue left unanswered.

Perhaps Pandey means to call the judges Luddites as well? A Luddite, for those unaware of the term, is a person who is opposed to technological developments. Dr. Pandey calling those who oppose Aadhaar Luddites betrays knowledge of the meaning of the term, because the technological criticism of Aadhaar has been actually backed by technologically sound arguments and evidence. In contrast, the bombast of the "Aadhaar mafia" as the proponents of Aadhaar are increasingly being referred to, due to ongoing unethical practices, are yet to present any factual rebuttal.

It is worthwhile to take note of some of the Luddites, as Dr Pandey would prefer to call them, who have been critical of Aadhaar. Justice K.S. Puttaswamy, retired judge of the Karnataka High Court and the original petitioner in the landmark ‘privacy case’ is one.

It is an irony that while critics of Aadhaar seem to have impeccable technological credentials while the UIDAI chief, who has the gumption to call these critics Luddites, himself doesn’t seem to understand the difference between private information and secret keys despite repeated explanations

Vicram Crishna, one of the two Indians to help develop software to enable Stephen Hawkins to ‘talk’through his wheelchair, J.T. D’Souza, biometrics expert, Troy Hunt, a web security professional and regional director for Microsoft in Australia, French cyber security researcher Baptiste Robert who tweets as Elliot Alderson and Anupam Saraph, a respected inventor and advisor on governance, informatics and strategic planning are also among those who have publicly expressed their concern about Aadhaar.

Alderson in fact has compared unfavourably Aadhaar’s approach to security as a ‘school level project’. Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, has come out publicly in criticism of Aadhaar. And in case more critics are to be named, one can cite the names of legal scholar Shamnad Basheer, Linux consultant Anivar Arvind and Samir Kelekar, who has a PhD in computer networking and holds three patents related to mobile security.

It is an irony that while critics of Aadhaar seem to have impeccable technological credentials while the UIDAI chief, who has the gumption to call these critics Luddites, himself doesn’t seem to understand the difference between private information and secret keys despite repeated explanations.

For his benefit, let me repeat the explanation. When you use a key to control access or authorisation, that key must be secret and not merely private. Just like guessing where you were on Saturday night or knowing the name of the street your home is on should not allow people to create a bank account in your name, lifting fingerprints off your glass of water shouldn't allow them to create a bank account and launder money in your name either.

A secret key must be one that is known only to the person who is the rightful owner of that access. In the event of a breach, it must be readily revoked and replaced. It must be unique. Just like you don't use the same password for your Twitter and netbanking, you should not use the same fingerprints for your PDS and money transfers either.

This is not very difficult to understand. If Dr. Pandey is not able to understand it with so many explanations provided repeatedly over years, perhaps he should undertake correcting the deficiencies first before holding a technology related job.
Till date there hasn't been a shred of factual explanation for why the criticism of Aadhaar is incorrect, while there have been various face saving measures because the UIDAI has no answers for valid criticism. Like the farce of "Virtual ID" to protect privacy after Aadhaar data has already been proliferated with little caution. If he has any factual explanation to show how Aadhaar does not violate privacy, he should not have kept it a secret from the Supreme Court.

While he is at it, Dr. Pandey should also name one private corporation that would pay the kind of money Aadhaar has cost the country for the quality of work on display. One corporation that deals with sensitive identity information or access to financial transactions that would be willing to risk access being protected by something as flimsy, as unrevokable, easily leaked, private information.

When public funds are used to subvert public interest, criticism is inevitable. Calling critics names cannot stop it.

Sorry, sir. "Fikar not, all is well" does not quite answer the mounting criticism.

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13597 - CITIZENS DECRY ‘WRONGFUL IMPOSITION’ OF AADHAAR - Mumbai Mirror

CITIZENS DECRY ‘WRONGFUL IMPOSITION’ OF AADHAAR

By Anjana Vaswani, Mumbai Mirror | Updated: May 25, 2018, 05.50 AM IST

Despite SC order, citizens claim various organisations continue to pressure them to produce UIDAI cards; they also aim to file a suit against CBDT.

About two months ago, when 35-year-old Kalachowki resident Satyachitanand Sharma was contacted by his bank, the New Satara Zilla Nagrik Sahakari Patsanstha Ltd, and asked to update his KYC information, he was happy to submit a voter ID. But the bank rejected it and insisted on the Aadhaar card, he told Mirror.

Sharma was in a roomful of people gathered at The Mumbai Press Club in Fort yesterday to voice similar complaints against different organisations – banks, schools, telephone operators and cooperative societies – which, they claim, have been insisting that citizens produce the ID card, despite the Supreme Court’s orders, and to find solutions.

In March 2018, the highest court in the land indefinitely extended the deadline for Aadhaar linkage with bank accounts and all central and state government schemes with the exception of some benefits/subsidies. However, people like Sharma say that despite this, organisations insist on the UIDAI card.

A 69-year-old Worli resident, who did not want to be named, said that both HDFC and SBI banks had refused to open demat accounts for him in the absence of the ID even though he had existing bank accounts with them.

Akbarally Kharodia, a 32-year-old Vashi resident, had with him a complaint printed in Gujarati, which he said he had registered with the Farmer Welfare Department in Gandhinagar. Kharodia, who hails from a family of farmers based in Pimpodar village in Gujarat, said that his family has been unable to procure fertilisers for the last couple of months as they are told that an Aadhaar card is a must for the Point of Sale (PoS) device, and that no alternative would be accepted.

Biometrics expert JT D’Souza, a panellist at the event, called this a dangerous situation and said, “The court made exceptions in only three cases – the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, Public Distribution System (PDS) and the LPG subsidy – where direct subsidies were involved and orders had already been passed. If Aadhaar is being demanded for fertiliser, it is in direct violation of the Supreme Court.”

D’Souza was part of a panel which included engineer Vickram Crishna, activist Kamayani Bali, Prof G Nagarjuna who works at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education and data privacy expert Ritesh Bhatia, all of whom piped in at different times to offer guidance to those present. D’Souza, Crishna, Bali and Nagarjuna, have, at different times and for different reasons, petitioned the court against the UIDAI scheme. Crishna said that he will shortly be filing a suit with others against the Central Board of Direct Taxation, “so that we are able to file our returns.”

Also present were those who had successfully thwarted attempts by organisations to impose Aadhaar cards. Among them was a parent who had refused to procure an Aadhaar card for his son despite repeated requests from the school. “In a letter, I reminded them of the Supreme Court order. The school did not reply but has stopped pressing for the document now,” said the parent, who wished to remain anonymous.

12693 - Who Is Running the ‘Orchestrated Wine And Cheese Campaign’ Against Aadhaar in the SC? - The Wire

Who Is Running the ‘Orchestrated Wine And Cheese Campaign’ Against Aadhaar in the SC?

BY ANOO BHUYAN ON 18/01/2018 • 10 COMMENTS

Defenders of Aadhaar have called opposition to it an organised campaign stemming from paranoia. But a look at the petitioners proves it is anything but.

One cannot confirm if any of these petitioners, who have all submitted bulky petitions, do in fact drink wine or/and eat cheese. Credit: File photo

New Delhi: Just last week, UIDAI’s former chairman Nandan Nilekani called the opposition to Aadhaar, an “orchestrated campaign”. A few days before that, an editorial in an Indian news portal said the opposition comes from “activists of the upper crust, upper class, wine ‘n cheese, Netflix-watching social media elite – mostly of the Left”.

And in an interview with The Wire last year, former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, “This paranoia is coming from a few people in a country of 150 crore.”

Nilekani, the architect of the Aadhaar project, has also spoken at length in reference to a major story in The Tribune that took on global resonance on how India’s entire Aadhaar database is being breached and leaked through various vendors.

Among the more prominent faces at the helm of the fight is one Padma Shri awardee, three Ramon Magsaysay awardees, three former Indian army personnel, a retired high court judge, a parliamentarian and the entire government of West Bengal.

And yet who are these people who apparently “drink wine, eat cheese”, and also make a commitment to the Supreme Court to spend money and time (over six years for some), only to spite Nilekani’s Aadhaar project?

The protesters

A look at the 30 challenges filed before the Supreme Court and the people behind them casts doubts on the accusations that the ‘wine and cheese’ lot have no understanding of base realities.

In fact, by simply looking at the various sections of society those opposed to the project belong to, it becomes clear that this isn’t an organised and ‘orchestrated’ campaign, but a motley bunch of individuals who have been tagged together by the Supreme Court on a now bloated Aadhaar petition. The earliest petition (by retired Justice Puttaswamy) has been plodding along for six years, since 2012, and 11 others out of the 30, joined the fight the very next year.

Also read: Aadhaar Isn’t Just About Privacy. There Are 30 Challenges the Govt Is Facing in Supreme Court

One cannot confirm if any of these petitioners do in fact drink wine or/and eat cheese, but from reading their bulky submissions, they appear have committed themselves to a cause that they truly believe interferes with the lives of the Indian people.

Justice (retired) Puttaswamy: At 92, Puttaswamy is one of the oldest living petitioners in the Supreme Court, and the oldest petitioner in the Aadhaar case. He was born in 1926 and enrolled as an advocate in 1952. By 1977, he was appointed a judge of the Karnataka high court. His challenge, a path he put himself on in 2012, is the first challenge to the Aadhaar case. The now historic privacy judgement delivered in August 2017, takes its name from his challenge.

Bezwada Wilson: Wilson has been the driving force behind India’s efforts at providing dignity, security and emancipation to manual scavengers who risk their lives while cleaning drains and latrines. Manual scavengers, who largely belong to the ‘lower caste’ in India, face stigma and exclusion. Wilson is not new to long-fought and hard-won public interest litigations and has fought a case which led to the government to pass laws for the prohibition of the employment of manual scavengers. In 2016, he received the Ramon Magsaysay award.

Major General (retired) SG Vombatkere: Vombatkere retired as a major general of the Indian Army after 35 years of service. He is now over 70 was awarded the Visishta Seva Medal by the President of India in 1993. He is a key petitioner in this case along with Bezwada Wilson. Their submission says it is “wider” than Puttaswamy’s and calls for the Aadhaar Act to be declared a violation of Article 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian constitution and asks that no one be denied any service on account of Aadhaar. They have also asked the court to direct that all data collected under Aadhaar by the public and private sector be destroyed. They have challenged the National Population Register and Aadhaar’s link.

Shantha Sinha: Shantha Sinha was the first chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and served two consecutive terms (2007 to 2013). She has also been on various other government committees on national integration, right to education, mid-day meals and adult education. Her work on the ground in Andhra Pradesh was directed at rescuing children from child labour and admitting them to government schools. She also received the Ramon Magsaysay award in 2003 and the Padma Shri in 1998.

Kalyani Menon Sen: Sen is a feminist scholar and has been an activist for women’s rights for over 25 years. She has worked with the United Nations Development Programme, advising on gender related issues. Sinha and Sen are co-petitioners in their case. Some of their prayers are similar to Wilson’s and Vombatkere’s. They’ve also moved court seeking that “accounts of current bank account holder will not be made in-operational and future applicants will not be coerced to submit their Aadhaar numbers.” They’ve petitioned the court similarly for the government’s order on linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar.

Aruna Roy: Roy was briefly a bureaucrat in the Indian Administrative Service (1968 to 1975) but resigned and is now known for her nearly 40 years of work with the rural poor in Rajasthan and ‘Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan’ which she runs. She was also a key figure in the movement which led to India passing the Right to Information Act as well as the Right to Food. She was a member of the UPA’s National Advisory Council for five years and was instrumental in the passage of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. Along with Wilson and Sinha, Roy has also received the Ramon Magsaysay award.

Nikhil Dey: Dey is a long-time colleague of Aruna Roy, a co-founder of the ‘Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan’ and a co-petitioner with her on this case. With Roy, he too has worked on the right to information, food and employment in India. Their petition saw every state and union territory of India being made a respondent. “The present experimentation would undoubtedly result in social exclusion by depriving persons of the fundamental rights and also putting at stake vast sums of tax payer’s money,” says their petition.

Major General (retired) SCN Jatar: Jatar served with the Indian Army from 1954. He commanded an engineer regiment in India’s 1971 war in the Poonch Sector (Jammu and Kashmir) and was the commander of infantry brigades in the Kashmir Valley and Rajasthan dessert, from 1977 to 1981. He has been appointed to several government committees and was also the Chairman at ONGC Videsh Limited and Oil India. His petition saw the Election Commission and Reserve Bank of India appear as respondents.

Colonel (retired) Mathew Thomas: Thomas, who is around 80, retired as Colonel from the Indian Army and has seen military action in Nagaland, China and Pakistan. In 2014, he was invited to address a BJP parliamentary panel, where he explained various issues around the Aadhaar scheme. He has asked the court to direct an investigation into the role of foreign and private companies in the collection of biometric data of Indians.

Supporting material in the form of research has been submitted to the court by Reetika Khera (professor at IIT Delhi), Jean Dreze (co-author with Amartya Sen of An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions), Jude Terence D’souza (securities system specialist in Mumbai), Anand Venkatanarayanan (data security expert in Bangalore), Samir Kelkar (security consultant) and Anumeha Yadav (journalist, formerly at Scroll.in).

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11506 - Who Is Opposing the Aadhaar Project? - The Wire

Who Is Opposing the Aadhaar Project?

BY USHA RAMANATHAN ON 06/06/2017 • 1 COMMENT

Proponents of Aadhaar have used several derogatory names for those raising questions about the project. But what motivated people to challenge the government’s plan in the first place?

The Aadhaar project has been criticised by many people for many reasons. Credit: Shome Basu

This is the fourth in a series of articles on the UID project that Usha Ramanathan will be writing for The Wire. Read the first part here, the second part here and the third part here.

The proponents of the unique identification (UID) project are angry and in a mood to attack detractors. Nandan Nilekani, the brains behind the project, has many names for them – all delivered pejoratively, of course: Khan Market liberals, JNU types, privacy-wallas who have colonised their minds with Western thought and Goebbelsian liars. He has been open about his contempt for everything happening in India: “In India, half are fake…fake…Fake is the operative word, right?” And, in another interview, “In India, you know, everything is a racket” and “every scheme is a scam” (as the interviewer, Vir Sanghvi, pertly observed, “except Aadhaar”). The last one was while talking about why children should have a UID number to get their mid-day meal in government schools.

Interestingly, all these adjectives are reserved for the hoi polloi. There isn’t a word that he breathes about the scams where the politically powerful and the corporate leadership have been caught with their hand – wrist and elbow – in the till. No Satyam, no 2G, no Commonwealth Games, no Bellary Brothers. No Vyapam, where witnesses are falling like ninepins, except they are falling dead.

ISPIRT, which presents itself as a software product industry roundtable, and of which Nilekani is the mentor, actually had a team that they named ‘Sudham’ allegedly meant to troll anti-UID critics. They had to shut it down after iSPIRT’s convener Sharad Sharma got caught operating Twitter handles using an alias to do some vicious trolling. In that time, they had moved from the relatively mildly contemptuous references about “Lutyens armchair folks (who) have never built anything in their lives” to “JNU-types” to more aggressive posturing and name calling such as “ISI stooge” and talking about the “drivel that comes from either an ignoramus or a malicious mind”.  (Sanjay Jain, who has since taken charge in iSPIRT, reportedly told Economic Times that Sudham was set up in late December 2016 to “dispel myths” about Aadhaar and India Stack.)

The most recent of this was when Ram Sewak Sharma, chief of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India who was earlier the director general of the UIDAI, spoke to the Indian Express and accused those questioning the UID of launching “motivated campaigns”, apparently to serve the data collection interests of various multinational companies. The immediate provocation was the flooding of the internet with data from leaking departments and ministries, containing information including mobile phone numbers, bank details and UID numbers, to be seen or downloaded. In some, a slight adjustment in the URL was enough to make the database accessible. The problem for Ram Sewak was not the leak. It was the embarrassment that was caused by the leaks being exposed. So it was not those who were leaking the data that were hauled up, but the researchers who were threatened. That is how the provision in the Aadhaar Act 2016, which leaves it to the UIDAI to decide who to pursue and about whom to complain, is being used.

When Sharad was forced into contrition and he made a public apology (for allowing the trolling, but not owning up to the trolling he had done), Nilekani tweeted a “Bravo”. That is how this game is played, it seems. While those opposing the UID are subjected to thinly-veiled intimidation, the India Stack “volunteers” (a word that is going to need some serious interrogation) are hurrah-ed for apologising (when found out) for nasty trolling.

And what motivated them to challenge the project, in court and in other public spaces? There has been plenty of writing by Reetika Khera, Jean Dreze, Gopal Krishna, Praveen Dalal, Himanshu, Ramkumar, Kiran Jonnalagadda, Sunil Abraham, and there was recently Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s dramatic change of opinion.

Moneylife has hosted articles and talks, and Ram Krishnaswamy’s blog is a storehouse of what has been in the media since 2010.

But these are not the exception. There are many others. And here are some of them.”

Shantha Sinha set up the MV Foundation, which works for the eradication of child labour. She is a former chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Children. According to her,

“The most effective way of tracking child labourers and out of school children is at the level of gram panchayats in rural areas and wards in urban areas where children are not statistics and numbers but real names and persons whose rights are to be protected and with involvement of community.  A UID… can at best give a number to the child but not help rescue the child or restore to her rights. Nor does it strengthen the capacities of public institutions to serve children. Further, it could also lead to stigmatising the child for good as an out-of-school child or child labourer. There can be no short cuts in the process of tracking children.

Deserving children have been denied admission into residential schools for want of Aadhaar. Among many others, there is the case of a tribal boy who fled from the Maoist area in Chattisgarh and joined school in Bhadrachalam in Telengana. He shifted from Hindi medium to Telugu medium, made it into the residential school after intense competition – and then was denied admission because he has no Aadhaar number! He lost one year, never procured an Aadhaar – how could he? He has no documents in Telengana. He then began to work as a construction labourer, and his fate is now sealed. While the Aadhaar card was said to be inclusive, in practice it has been exactly the opposite. It has deprived innumerable children of their legitimate access to their education. Exclusion is hitting the mid-day meal too!”

Bezwada Wilson has spent his adult life working for the eradication of the practice of manual scavenging. In 2010, Wilson was one of 17 concerned citizens, which included Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Romila Thapar and S.R. Sankaran among others, who issued a “statement of concern” about the project. He says,

“We want to bury this identity of having been manual scavengers. Coming out of untouchability is not easy. Oppressive identities are to be cast off, not documented and kept forever. What we need is a technology that will destroy this demeaning work and finish off this identity. Instead, what this is doing is branding us forever.

This project was never about plugging leakages in subsidies. Look where they have taken it. First, they said it was only for welfare and then they have kept on expanding it into all kinds of areas. All this time, the government has been waiving corporate loans worth Rs 1.14 lakh crore! How can you expect citizens to trust this? “This project is making nonsense out of choice, consent, even citizenship. It has to be understood that the people are not slaves.”

Colonel Mathew Thomas, who retired after serving ten years in the army and another ten years in defence research, says,

“Everyone has a motivation for what they do or say. In the 1970s, in the early years of computers I used them (computers) for the solution of scientific and business problems; specifically, Finite Element Analysis for structural problems on missile components and production planning and control systems for missile manufacture. The experience was invaluable. I learned the hard way what computers and IT could be used for and where these are useless. Most importantly, I understood two things: one, that physical ground reality must be organised to match proposed computer solutions before the solution yields results. And, two, misapplication of IT systems to problems where they cannot be used is dangerous as it fosters a false sense of resolving issues.

As soon as the project was announced in January 2009, my first thoughts were, ‘How in heaven’s name, are they going to do this?’ So, I wrote to the prime minister and Nandan Nilekani. I received no replies. As I continued to study, research and obtain information on the scheme, I found an organised pattern of untruth and obfuscation. The government then, and now, and those managing the project have been less than honest with us; some in government out of ignorance or misplaced faith, and some wilfully, for reasons that remain unknown. Why do you think the UK scrapped the National ID card and the US is yet to implement its Real ID Act after eleven years? Do you know that the UIDAI says, in its contracts with companies that are handling the data, “No assurance can be provided as to the accuracy of the demographic data in its database”? Do you understand what this means?”

Major General S.G. Vombatkere (retd) has an enduring respect for the liberties which the constitution recognises. His keenness to contest the unconstitutionality of the project derives from what he saw of the making of constitutional history.

“I remember my father and recall a personal debt to the constitution of India and the Supreme Court of India. To elaborate, my father, Vombatkere Gurunandan Row (better known as V.G. Row, barrister-at-law), was general secretary of a society named People’s Education Society and was publishing a newsletter from the society. People’s Education Society was declared as an unlawful association under extant criminal law by the Government of Madras [The State of Madras vs V.G.Row].

My father fought the charge in the courts of law up to the Supreme Court before a five-judge bench including the CJI, and on March 31, 1952, won his case on the basis of the freedom of expression and freedom of association, which the Constitution guarantees every citizen. Indeed years later, on 16 October 2008, Justice K.Kannan (Judge, Punjab & Haryana High Court) noted thus: “The triad of fundamental freedoms of expression, movement and association found the first affirmation in A.K.Gopalan and V.G.Row, the names that are etched into constitutional history via the Madras High Court”.

If my father had not fought and won his freedom on the basis of the constitution of India, he would have been imprisoned, changing everything in a big way for my mother, my brother and me way back in 1952, when I was still a child. That is the debt I and my family owe to the constitution of India, and to the Supreme Court of India which recognised and enforced its freedoms.

Long live the Republic of India, and may the values it enshrines always remain valid in Indian society!”

J.T. Dsouza is a biometrics expert who demonstrated in the Planning Commission how ridiculously simple it is to fake a fingerprint. That was on September 30, 2011, in the presence of representatives from the UIDAI and Natgrid.

“My objection is to the hegemony of the state, where the state treats its citizen as subjects to be subjugated. Identity projects, with control residing in a centrally controlled repository have been repeatedly misused in the past. Nazi Germany and Kosovo (with the ideas of ‘identity cleansing’ and ‘archival cleansing’) in more recent times are examples.

The intrusive bullying and abuse of power by the state that the project has already witnessed is testimony to the problems of the project.

My second objection about technology involves a whole panoply of reasons. One, the use of wholly untested theories as the foundation of the project. Two, intrinsic flaws of biometrics as an authentication factor. Three, vulnerabilities of centralised database to misuse, both official and inadvertent. Four, non-existent technical infrastructure in most of our country. No matter how secure you make the central core, the nature of such a system makes securing the periphery impossible. This project continues to gloss over all of this at our peril.”

Nagarjuna is a professor at the Gnowledge lab, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He says,

“Centralisation of any resource will eventually go against the democratic ideals of distributed justice. Centralisation leads to single point of failure.

In a true democracy, we wish the state to be transparent to the people, and not vice versa. The very possibility of a certified unique identity will create multiple modes of criminal activities that never existed in the past. A certified unique identity will create more crime than reducing the crime.

The Aadhaar system is not built like self-reliant technology ventures like Atomic Energy or Space Research, but with commercial links with global security companies. This will make the entire country vulnerable. Considering that the Aadhaar is promoted by powerful agencies (both private and public), it shows that it serves their interests and it is not about recognising power in  the people.

Identity is not created by birth, real social identity is developed dynamically as we live. Freedom to build or change character without coercion to other lives must be respected at any cost.”

Anupam Saraph is an innovator and polymath, and has been an advisor to government on technology and on identity systems. He asks,

“What is the motivation of the child who sees the emperor’s new robes don’t exist? What will the child do if the emperor insists the robes exist?

Having experience in building identity solutions, and having developed logical frameworks for identity documents, it is plain that the UID is merely a number that is assigned to unverified and unaudited data submitted by private enrolees – 34,000 of who have been suspended by the UIDAI. This means that there can be millions of ghosts in the UIDAI database.

It is fairly obvious that any bank accounts opened solely on the basis of such a number can allow “ghosts” to create and operate “mule” accounts. Furthermore, even while the RBI’s own system of digital money transfers has been used by government for over a decade, the sudden unexplained switch to a non-government payment system based on Aadhaar that facilitates money laundering by destroying the money trail raises serious questions that need investigation.

The UID cannot serve as the basis for identification of any individual in an impartially arbitrable way. This means using it to build governance, national security, digital economy and anything at all is plainly absurd and, because it will destroy lives and the nation, inhuman. If I turn a blind eye to what is so obvious I would be no less guilty of the crimes than the perpetuators of the UID.

Should anyone who sees absurdities, illegalities, anti-national and criminal intent need any further motivation to expose it?”

Vickram Crishna is an engineer who, like most others featured here, has challenged the project in court.

“My problem with the technology is, in most instances, that commercial considerations trump the priority of meeting incredibly high standards, and this can be seen in the design choices at every stage. The manner of implementation of this system, however, is fully dependent upon a very high quality of seamless connectivity across the country, which in itself demands a very high level and availability of specialised labour, apart from electrical power and stability. We are some years away from approaching such a situation  and the present distribution of quality of service is heavily weighted in favour of major cities, and against rural areas in general.

It is attractive to initially bar all failures, and claim reduced expenditure as savings, and this is what is being observed now.

I have a problem with the understanding of ‘social contract’, as expressed in the implementation of the UID scheme. The constitution, as I read it, from its opening phrase of “We, the People…” was intended to lead to a state that is primarily citizen-facing. However, the justification for identity documents of one kind and another is invariably found to be the need to address failures in the state’s ability to identify citizens, and not any failures of the citizens themselves, as part of the social contract expressed as the constitution.”

Kalyani Menon-Sen is a feminist researcher of 25 years’ standing. She says,

“Many years of working with poor women has made me keenly aware of the many barriers they face in accessing their entitlements. Proving their identity is not the major barrier. The real corruption is in the system.This issue of systemic exclusions has been at the centre of my work. Over these last seven years, I have more and more first-hand evidence that UID has not improved service delivery, whether it’s rations or gas cylinders or pensions. Even more worrying is the fact that Aadhaar is actually creating more exclusion, again because of systemic failures – even people with valid UIDs are unable to claim benefits because “machine kharab hai (the machine isn’t working)” or fingerprints don’t match or because some new rule is unearthed that they are not aware of. I think what really brought home to me that the promoters of the scheme were losing their moorings was the announcement of the Aadhaar-midday meal linkage. We have the most horrendous rates of child malnutrition, children come to school starving and for many, the school meal is the only cooked food they get that day. This is a universal provision. What is the sense in making it Aadhaar dependent?

This is true for school admissions too – it is a universal right and making it Aadhaar dependent will only help schools to exclude children whom they don’t want to take – because they are poor, disabled, Muslims or Dalits. These are the exclusions that are happening and are being ignored.

I feel utterly frustrated that we invest so much attention on the GDP and completely ignore the GDI (gender development index) – shocking rates of anaemia, underage pregnancies, maternal deaths, malnutrition, violence, women’s employment. Do we really need to argue about methods of calculation when the naked truth is visible to the naked eye?

So I felt I had to take a stand and do something – I was very sure that if the facts about exclusion are put before the Supreme Court, they would at least stay these notifications while examining all the other constitutional issues.”

M.K. Pai is a software engineer and data scientist. He says,

“I fear that Aadhaar will destroy our delicate democracy by threatening exclusion. We can already see a future where dissenters will be silenced, their bank accounts and phones disabled, and unable to travel.

It is profoundly ugly for any government to require its citizens to get fingerprinted, no matter how noble the objectives. My fingerprints are my property and I should not be compelled to part with them unless I am a threat to society.

I am a software engineer and a data scientist. My work makes me very concerned about the future if we succumb today. Frankly, I do not trust any political party with such power.

Privacy is important and worth fighting for.”

The Meghalaya Peoples’ Committee on Aadhaar in a recent statement said,

“…it is noticed and have been informed regularly that subtle ways are being used to have people enrolled with aadhaar including school children under various guises, putting people in uncomfortable situations and that the statement made by the state government’s chief secretary on the matter (Shillong Times, 04/02/2017) confirms the fact. However, despite the fact that different departments and ministries of the Union government and state government, financial institutions have over and over again issued notifications, advertisements, including regular texting in mobiles, for necessity to enrol or register for aadhaar card, it is to be reiterated and reminded that enrolment for aadhaar is voluntary and so should not be coerced and intimidated by any establishment of government(s), institutions – medical, educational, financial, sports, etc. including corporate bodies.

…Yes,  having  Aadhaar  card  may be  one  of  the  requirements  but  it  is not  the  only  proof  of  one’s  identity  and  must  remain  optional  and  voluntary.”

Nachiket Udupa studied in IIT, has been part of campaigns on rural employment guarantee, food security and the right to information, and is currently involved in the marketing of sustainable foods. According to him,

“At an ideological level it makes profiling and tracking much, much easier than it should be. The path that they are heading down will lead to not just an Orwellian state (as in government doing complete surveillance of its citizens) but also Orwellian corporates (as in companies also knowing way more about their customers than they should). It is attacking privacy in the worst possible way.

At a practical level, because fingerprinting technology doesn’t work well enough, it is leading to large scale exclusions and hardships for many people, especially the poor. I am particularly bothered that this will lead to slow dismantling of the various hard-won rights of the poor, such the rights to food, work, education, etc.

It is compulsory, and with no opt-out feature.

I don’t like how the people behind Aadhaar think that they are holier than thou and seem to have a sense of entitlement and would like to be beyond any sort of accountability.”

Ankita Anand is an award-winning journalist, writer and co-founder of the street theatre group Aatish based in Delhi, and this is how she says it:

U,IDidn’t

I waited for the day someone would ask me my number
Until the state did, and I smirked,
“I know you’ve used that line on a billion others.”

At that it should have left,
But it persisted,
Insisted it would give me one,
If I did not have one of my own.

It wouldn’t take no for an answer,
And now I have fingerprints instead of handholding,
Iris scans, while I wait to be seen,

At least I would be safe, I tried to tell myself,
Until yesterday, when I found myself exposed,
Every single digit of me, up for sale as data porn.

(Anand and Udupa had to battle the system before they could register their marriage without a UID.)

Nikhil Dey, Shankar Singh, Vineet Bhambhu , Nikhil Shenoy, Aruna Roy and others work with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, and this is what they say:

“We are activists who live amongst people in rural India and also travel to many places across the country to work with campaigns and movements to improve delivery of programmes meant for poor and marginalised communities and individuals. We believe that well designed people centric social sector programs can make a big difference in people’s lives. We have also spent many years looking at policy and its impact on implementation.

The UID is  currently one of the biggest policy initiatives where proponents of UID claim better delivery by a) ending corruption b) much greater efficiency and most importantly c) of comprehensive inclusion.

We are motivated by the suffering, frustration and pain we are witness to and therefore make strong comments on the UID – initially through apprehension, and, now, through experience and example.

It has, in fact, miserably failed on all three claims. In some ways it has made things worse. Exclusion due to the mandatory use of UID has been so high, that it should cause a comprehensive rethink for the delivery of welfare benefits. Food security rations are supposed to be delivered to 1 crore households in the state of Rajasthan. But figures have shown that at least 25-30% of these households are not able to draw their rations despite being enrolled under UID. This has meant exclusion of some of the most vulnerable people for whom the food security act was designed. In some ways, this is criminal negligence and exclusion, and this has been happening over a period of the nine months since September 2016, when the options started being shut off. We have documented very serious life threatening cases of exclusion and put them up as videos on the net. (We hope these policy makers will see the videos and answer each one of the questions of the poor about who will be held accountable for the failure to enable them to access their entitlements.) Corruption has not reduced – it has only changed its stripes, and inefficiency and delay are now caused by man and machine.

Our own motivation is to use evidence to convince policy makers to change their policy, or to convince those whose minds are still open to refuse to allow mandatory imposition of something that has clearly failed to deliver what it promised to. It has made things worse. Whether or not anyone bothers to listen, we are motivated by the pain and frustration we witness – to keep presenting the facts.

The poor are speaking; only those who need to listen are not even there. In the language of the day, they are ‘presenceless’.”

These are a section of the people who have been challenging the project, in court and outside it. There are many more – and they are from all parts of the country. Such as professor K. Saradamoni from Thiruvananthapuram, a very senior women’s rights activist, who wrote in saying, “Please think of something to stop this.” Or  a retired law professor from a law research institute who wrote to say, “It is only last year that the bank asked for fingerprints verification. Earlier, just physical presence and some ID proof used to be enough. In my case, even when the requirement was not there and despite my giving life certificate (which the bank says they duly forwarded to the EPFO) my pension, so called, was stopped after December 2015. The bank did send them reminders but no result. Then came the requirement of biometrics. My fingerprints did not match but the bank was very cooperative and sent a few letters, as they say, supporting my claim. It has been quite long but no response again from the EPFO. Now the bank has given me a form, certifying my identity, and asked me to go there personally. What disturbs me is why should I be made to run around without any fault? The bank is certifying my case, I have all other documents to prove my identity, why then this stupid requirement of matching of fingerprints?  The entire credibility of fingerprints to establish identity of criminals in criminology and forensic sciences has gone for a toss. It is time things and theories and fundamentals change.”

Usha Ramanathan is a legal researcher.

3112 - AADHAAR PROJECT-Dispelling the haze by Usha Ramanathan

Volume 30 - Issue 05 :: Mar. 09-22, 2013 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE from the publishers of THE HINDU

AADHAAR PROJECT

Dispelling the haze

USHA RAMANATHAN

( FrontLine)

That the lawmakers of the country have found themselves in a haze of incomprehension about the UID project, which is being promoted as a “game changer”, is deeply unsettling.

VIJAY VERMA/PTI 

United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi presents an Aadhaar ATM card to a beneficiary at the launch of the Delhi Annashree Yojna in New Delhi on December 15, 2012. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit (left) and UIDAI Chairperson Nandan Nilekani are also seen.

MANY Union Cabinet Ministers are confused about the government’s Unique Identity (UID), or Aadhaar, project. At a Cabinet meeting held on January 31, there was confusion regarding this issue, with some of them reportedly wanting to know whether the UID was a card or a number. This is an attempt to clarify some basic issues about the UID project.

Is the UID a card or a number?

The UID is a 12-digit number. It is not a card. What is sometimes mistaken for a “card” is only the intimation that the issuing authority, the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), sends to a person who has been allotted a number.

The enrolling agency collects a person’s demographic information —name, address, gender, age, and for children, details of parents/guardian—and captures the biometric information—prints of all 10 fingers, scans of both irises and the photograph of the face.

The UIDAI then has the data “de-duplicated” by cross-verifying them against its database to check whether the person is already enrolled and has been issued a number. Since a person could enrol multiple times with a changed name or address, the accuracy and usefulness of the system depend on biometrics.

The UID is, therefore, a number that is linked to a person’s fingerprints and iris scans on a database.

Do we know for sure that fingerprints and iris are unique and reliable metrics?

The truth is we do not. And this is an area of concern, especially as the UID project seeks to make these the key metrics of a person’s identity.

In February 2010, the UIDAI issued a “notice inviting applications for hiring a biometric consultant”, which contained this candid admission: “While NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology, the United States agency that studies biometrics technology in the context of its application to public policy] documents the fact that the accuracy of biometric matching is extremely dependent on demographics and environmental conditions, there is a lack of a sound study that documents the accuracy achievable on Indian demographics (i.e., larger percentage of rural population) and in Indian environmental conditions (i.e., extremely hot and humid climates and facilities without air-conditioning). In fact we do not find any credible study assessing the achievable accuracy in any of the developing countries” ¹ (emphasis added throughout).

Then, between March and June 2010, the UIDAI did a proof of concept (PoC) study of biometric enrolment. The report, uploaded in February 2011, concluded that it had “validated one hypothesis regarding biometric enrolment”—that iris enrolment was “not particularly difficult” and “dramatically improved” accuracy levels and the “accuracy levels necessary for the de-duplication of all residents of India are achievable”. But what sticks out is a paragraph in the report: “The goal of the PoC was to collect data representative of India and not necessarily to find difficult-to-use biometrics. 

Therefore, extremely remote rural areas, often with populations specialising in certain types of work (tea plantation workers, areca nut growers, etc.) were not chosen. This ensured that degradation of biometrics characteristics of such narrow groups was not over-represented in the sample data collected.” ²

In July 2010, it was reported that a 2005 paper by researchers at the Rajendra Prasad Ophthalmic Institute in Delhi estimated that there were six to eight million people in India with corneal blindness. It further identified the issue of cataract, which resulted from nutritional deficiencies and prolonged exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet rays, and corneal scars caused by injury or infection of the cornea.³ These are clearly problems essentially pertaining to the labouring masses, the aged and the disabled.

In March 2012, the UIDAI readied its report, “Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Authentication”. Authentication is the process by which a person’s biometric detail is used to establish or verify his or her identity.

The report dislodges the common assumption that the print of the thumb and the index finger can be used to identify a person. It appears that for 55 per cent of those tested, these fingers did not work as their “best finger”. The report recommends a “Best Finger Detection” process. “The best finger to be used for authentication depends on the intrinsic qualities of the finger (for example, ridge formation, how worn out they are, cracked, etc.) as well as the quality of images captured during enrolment process and the authentication transaction,” it says. The fingers are, therefore, to be labelled green, yellow or red, depending on their suitability for single-finger authentication. In addition, some residents could be determined to be “not suitable for reliable fingerprint authentication”. Those younger than 15 and, more especially, persons above 60 years of age had the highest rates of rejection. This is the shaky foundation on which authentication rests.

The report does not tell us how “biometric exemptions”—that is, people who do not have reliable fingerprints or irises that can be used in enrolment—will be treated. Nor does it spell out an alternative to help secure their identity. Nor, indeed, does it speak of spoofing.

On September 30, 2011, J.T. D’Souza, managing director of SPARC Systems Limited, who works with biometrics equipment and has been following the UID project closely and critically, demonstrated to officials in the Planning Commission how, using some Fevicol and candle wax, he could spoof a fingerprint and use it to authenticate someone else. Officials of the UIDAI said they would look into it, but there is no information on what steps they have taken. ⁴

What about authentication using iris as a biometric? The “Iris Authentication Accuracy Report” was published in September 2012. It starts with the assumption that “the iris does not get worn out with age, or with use. In addition, iris authentication is not impacted by change in the weather.” The report attributes these assumptions to “iris technology literature”. The part of the claim that requires validation is that there is a part of the human body that neither ages nor withers nor wears out. The fact is that this is a new field of inquiry and there is very little literature on the subject.

Perhaps, the first longitudinal study of the ageing iris as a biometric is found in a Notre Dame University study conducted by two professors, Samuel Fenker and Kevin Bowyer. They state: “Using a large data set of iris images acquired over a three-year period, we have analysed cohorts of irises with images acquired over one, two and three years. We find clear and conclusive evidence that template ageing does occur in iris biometric matching. Specifically, the experimental evidence indicates that the false non-match rate increases with increasing time between acquisition of enrolment image and the image to be recognised. In our results, the false non-match rate increases by greater than 50 per cent with two years of time lapse.” The remedy, they suggest, is to have regular “re-enrolment”. At the time of writing, the implications of re-enrolment are not known.

In the process of the UID project roll-out, it has been reported from Jharkhand that authentication failed in four out of every 10 persons. This is the evidence emerging from the field.

Is UID voluntary?

While marketing the idea, the UID was projected as voluntary and was sold as providing an identity to those who have no other. Since, unlike the ration card or the voter ID, the UID does not have any intrinsic value or purpose, there was little enthusiasm for enrolling for it. This led to a change in tactics. Persons without UID are now facing the threat of denial of services. The UIDAI has been involved in the process of making UID mandatory. There is a push to make UID essential for getting rations, accessing banking services and getting gas connections and refills; for school admissions in the economically weaker section (EWS) category, registration of marriages and property transactions; and for getting caste certificates. And, if the Chief Secretary of Maharashtra were to have his way, even making an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act would need the UID. This aggressive push seems to be based not on the usefulness of the UID to the system, but rather to drive the enrolment process.

The fact that the UID has such a low penetration even in the districts that have been selected for the roll-out of UID-linked cash transfers (in lieu of direct subsidies) must be understood in this context.

Is there a law that governs the UID project?

No. However, there is an executive order for the establishment of the UIDAI within the Planning Commission. On December 3, 2010, over two months after the project had begun to collect and process personal data, the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, was introduced in Parliament and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF). The SCF gave its report in December 2011. SCF members, cutting across party lines, found the Bill severely inadequate and recommended that the UID project be taken back to the drawing board.

The SCF found it “unethical and violative of Parliament’s privileges” to proceed with the project when lawmaking was still under way. It commented adversely on the conflation of the “resident” and the “citizen”. The UID scheme, it said, had “been conceptualised with no clarity of purpose… leaving many things to be sorted out during the course of its implementation” and “is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion”. The “collection of biometric information and its linkage with personal information of individuals” without amending the Citizenship Act and Rules “appears beyond the scope of subordinate legislation, which needs to be examined in detail by Parliament”.

It was scathing about the project, which “continues to be implemented in an overbearing manner without regard to legalities and other social consequences”. On voluntariness, it said: “Although the scheme claims that obtaining Aadhaar number is voluntary, an apprehension is found to have developed in the minds of people that in future, services/benefits, including food entitlements, would be denied in case they do not have Aadhaar number.”

It cited the United Kingdom’s experience with the National ID project regarding the huge cost; the complexity; the untested, unreliable and unsafe technology; and the possibilities of risk to the safety and security of citizens.

The SCF recognised that the UID project “facilitates the UIDAI and the registrars to create database of information of people of the country. Considering the huge database size and possibility of misuse of information”, it said, “…and in the absence of data protection legislation, it would be difficult to deal with the issues like access and misuse of personal information, surveillance, profiling, linking and matching of databases and securing confidentiality of information, etc”.

On September 28, 2010, seventeen eminent persons, including Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Romila Thapar, Justice A.P. Shah, S.R. Sankaran, Aruna Roy, K.G. Kannabiran and Bezwada Wilson, issued a statement in which they said that before the UIDAI went any further, it was imperative to do a feasibility study and a cost benefit analysis, engage experts to study its constitutionality, put a law of privacy in place, and have an informed public debate before any major changes are introduced. In the meantime, they said, the project should be halted. The SCF echoed these concerns.

The SCF found the UID project to be “full of uncertainty in technology as the complex scheme is built upon untested, unreliable technology and several assumptions. Further, despite adverse observations by the UIDAI Biometrics Standards Committee on error rates of biometrics, the UIDAI is collecting the biometric information.”

Relying on registrars to ensure that only genuine residents are enrolled, the SCF said, “may have far-reaching consequences for national security”.

There is still no law, and the UIDAI continues to function in a legal vacuum.

What is the link between the National Population Register (NPR) and the UID?

The NPR is under the Citizenship Act and is a prelude to creating a National Citizen’s Register. The Registrar General of India is responsible for carrying out this task. It is an attempt to establish who is a citizen and who is not and to control infiltration and the entry of illegal immigrants.

The 2003 Rules authorise the collection of only 15 fields of data, and fingerprinting and scanning of irises are not among them. This means that what has been done so far in the NPR process is in violation of the law. The NPR has not itself studied biometrics but has merely gone along with the UID.

The notification that set up the UIDAI within the Planning Commission gave it the mandate to “generate and assign UID” to “residents”, to maintain the database and to work on ways in which user/implementing agencies may use the UID, for instance, for the delivery of various services. It was also to “take necessary steps to ensure collation of NPR with UID (as per approved strategy)”. The expansion of its mandate happened at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on the UID, which was constituted after Nandan Nilekani, former chief executive officer of Infosys, was appointed the UIDAI Chairperson. 

Nilekani was extended permission initially to enrol 10 crore people, which was later increased to 20 crore. It was increased further to 50 per cent of the population after the Home Ministry in January 2012 agreed on an information-sharing agreement with the UIDAI.

The duplication in what the NPR and the UIDAI are doing is one of the unresolved areas.

UID and outsourcing.

The UID project relies on a large number of enrollers who, in turn, are dependent on “introducers” and “verifiers” to help enrol those without IDs. And these have proved to be severely compromised. The issuance of a UID number to “Kothimeer [coriander], s/o Palav, Gongura tota, Mamidikaya vuru [raw mango village, in Telugu]” with the photograph of a mobile phone was only an extreme manifestation of the deficiencies that have shown up. ⁵

One criticism has been that every time a problem crops up with the technology, or despite it, it is sought to be overlaid with another layer of technology, adding to the costs and introducing one more experiment to the project. So, for instance, when fingerprints seemed an inadequate metric, iris scan was added as an additional metric; a Global Positioning System (GPS) was attached to enrolment equipment after an episode in Hyderabad revealed large-scale enrolment of non-existent people. The investigations in the case are still on.

S. GOPAKUMAR 

 Scanning for Biometric Information for the Aadhaar project in progress at the Christ Nagar Senior Secondary School in Thiruvallam, Kerala, on February 16, 2012.

The NPR uses the method followed by the Census, where the enumerators have a responsibility to locate and reach persons to be enrolled.

The potential for exclusion is inherent in both processes.

Who holds the data collected?

The 2009 notification says that the UIDAI “shall own and operate UID database”. The standing committee cited the National Information Centre’s (NIC) concern that the “issues relating to privacy and security of UID data could be better handled by storing [them] in a government data centre”, indicating that it is not currently with the government but “owned” by the UIDAI.

In its Strategic Overview document (2010), the UIDAI had set out a revenue model by which it could become self-sufficient and begin to earn a reasonable profit through selling its authentication services, after which it would not be dependent on government resources. The report of the Technology Advisory Group on Unique Projects (TAG-UP, July 2011), chaired by Nilekani, promotes the idea of National Information Utilities (NIU). These will be “private companies” acting in the “public interest” and will be “profit-making” but not “profit maximising”. Data held by the government is to be handed over to these private companies, which will then use them for profit-making. The 2012-13 Budget adopted the NIU model of data management in relation to the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The UIDAI, too, seems to be moving in that direction, where it will acquire the character of an NIU.

This is deeply disturbing, for it will mean that our data will become the property of a company, which may then do data mining and use data as an asset to make money.

Why have there been concerns about the companies involved in the project?

Since the early days of the project, alarm bells have been rung about the involvement of companies such as L-1 Identity Solutions and Accenture. These companies have a close relationship with the intelligence establishment in the United States. L-1 Identity Solutions has been doing a lot of work for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It has even had George Tenet, an ex-CIA chief, on its board. Accenture has been partnering the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. in its Smart Borders Project. L-1 Identity Solutions has recently been bought by Safran, a French company in which the French government is a large shareholder.

In reply to an RTI query about these companies, the UIDAI said: “There are no means to verify whether the said companies/organisations are of U.S. origin or not. As per our contractual terms and conditions, only the companies/organisations who are registered can bid” (reproduced in an appendix to Mathew Thomas (ed.), UID is not yours, 2012).

These leave unanswered disturbing questions about the security and confidentiality of a population-wide database.

Has any other country got a project such as this?

No. In fact, the UIDAI prides itself that nowhere in the world is there such a project, on such a scale and on the basis of a biometric database. This, alongside the experimental stage in which biometric enrolment, de-duplication and authentication are at this point, has given rise to concerns that this is a massive experiment on the population of India.

None of the countries in the developed world has accepted biometric identity even as developing countries are encouraged to adopt it.

The George W. Bush administration considered a biometric database when it enacted the Real ID Act in 2005. But it realised the impracticalities of the project, especially in depending upon biometric stability and accuracy across the swathe of population, and across time, and so shelved it.

In Australia, an Access Card for health and welfare benefits was abandoned in 2007, two years after it was started, after protests that raised concerns about privacy, identity theft and disclosure of information.

In the U.K., when the David Cameron government jettisoned the biometric ID project, the Home Secretary explained that this was done because the government was the servant of the people and not their master, and that the project would constitute “intrusive bullying”.

What are the costs of the project?

The direct costs are expected to reach Rs.15,000 crore in this phase of the project. This does not include the cost to the enrollers, the registrars, the time and resources spent by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), administrators and the people enrolling, or the costs of authentication equipment. There is also the cost that is generated in shifting to the UID system, and the cost of failure, both to the individual and to the system. The savings are hypothetical and so far unsubstantiated.

Vijay Unni, former Registrar General of India, has asked why, when the complete Census exercise is carried out at a cost of about Rs.2,000 crore, the UID project cost, at many times that amount, is being borne without question.

Will the UID help in reducing leakage and reduce subsidies?

If de-duplication works, perhaps it will help eliminate duplicates and ghost entries in various databases. If there is a linking of databases and profiling of persons, those not entitled to subsidy may get identified.

But, as academics and activists advocating right to food have argued, given the rates of hunger and child malnourishment in India the country needs to worry about under-inclusion.

The only attempt at calculating the savings that the UID may effect can be found in a document produced for the Planning Commission by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). ⁶ The study, funded by the UIDAI, relies on patchy data since “the present state of knowledge does not permit precise quantification of the gains”. And “many of the gains from Aadhaar are difficult to quantify as they are intangible”.

In effect, we do not know the effect UID will have on subsidies and leakages.

What are the other anxieties that dog this project?

The convergence of databases and profiling of individuals is a serious concern, and the “seeding” of the UID number in various databases accentuates the problem.

A recent report says that Apollo Hospitals is spearheading an initiative to link the health records of patients with the Aadhaar identification system, raising questions about confidentiality of health data. Linking up the Socio-Economic and Caste Census and the voter ID to the UID will breach the protection that anonymity provides.

The rush into UID-linked cash transfer has given rise to the belief that this is only to help the UID quicken its pace of enrolment which, the UID website reveals, had slumped. And, the cost of failure has not even been considered.

That the lawmakers of the country have found themselves in a haze of incomprehension about a project that is being promoted as a “game changer” is deeply unsettling.

Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights.

END NOTES

1 http://uidai.gov.in/UID_PDF/Archives/Tenders/Hiring_of_experienced_individual_Biometric_consultant_for_PoC_study.pdf

2 http://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/uid_enrolment_poc_report.pdf

3 http://m.economictimes.com/tech/ites/missing-biometrics-create-unique-problems-for-uid-project/articleshow/msid-6178480,curpg-2.cms

4 D’Souza’s demonstration at the Press Club Mumbai can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a96L_SphR4

5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILauTJEDCb4

6 http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/rep_uid_cba_paper.pdf

2293 - NGO questions people's privacy in UID scheme - TOI

RANCHI: Taking a leaf out of the recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee on finance (SCF) that raised objections on the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010, Delhi-based NGOs have called upon the Jharkhand government to stay the execution of UID projects in the state.

Citing excerpts from the recommendations of the SCF, headed by BJP MP Yashwant Sinha, the NGO activists asserted that the MoU signed by the government on June 25, 2010, was without any legal and constitutional mandate.

This claim, however, remains unfounded as the UIDAI is functioning under an executive order of the department of planning and has no links with the NIDAI Bill. The issue was recently clarified by the director general and mission director of UIDAI when he addressed the media in the capital during his three-day visit.

Organizing a round table, report on SCF and its implications for Aadhaar project and National Population register for multipurpose National ID Card (MNIC),

Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties member Gopal Krishna said given the fact that the Election Commission had shortlisted 15 documents as evidence of identity and citizenship, there was no need to have the 16th instrument (read UID).

"It violates citizens' basic and constitutional right to privacy because collecting biometric information of an individual was limited to criminals," he said clarifying that even in case of prisoners, the fingerprint data is supposed to be deleted after acquittal under the Prisoner Identification Act.

JT D'Souza, an expert in biometrics technology, Mumbai, gave a presentation on how biometric information was vulnerable to exploitation. Using a finger print reader, he demonstrated fake finger prints being read by the machine. He said a fingerprint on a semi solid wax slab can be filled up with adhesive and allowed to set for eight hours. "Once the adhesive block is removed, it takes up the exact marks of finger prints using which any finger print reader can be fooled," he said.

Another participant, Sunil Abraham, director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, said there is no data protection or privacy law in place. "The UID project was allowed to march on without any protection being put in place," he said.

"On one hand, the government wants its citizens to be transparent by giving all their biometric and demographic data, but on the other hand, people in higher authorities are making every bid to conceal facts and function in a non-transparent manner," he said.

D' Souza also raised questions about the uniqueness of fingerprints as it has never been tested on a vast population. Citing examples from foreign countries where fingerprint studies have proved to be ineffectual in establishing non duplication, he said biometric data if hacked could be misused.

2292 - Call to purge unique card plan

Call to purge unique card plan

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Patna, Jan. 10: The unique identification (UID) project, headed by former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, came in for strong criticism today from academics and legal experts at a round-table meeting at AN Sinha Institute.

The meeting was organised to discuss the parliamentary standing committee report on the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) “Aadhaar” project and the National Population Register (NPR)-based Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC).
At the meeting, called by AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi and Citizens’ Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL), New Delhi, speakers said the state government should put a stay on the execution of both the UID and the MNIC projects.

Mohan Rao, professor, Centre for Social Medicine & Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said: “UID is dangerous for public health. It should be rejected unequivocally because it violates confidentiality and privacy which is considered sacred in medical practice… The UID’s public health paper is an idiotic paper which is not aware of public health reality.”

J.T. D’Souza, expert, biometrics technology, Mumbai, said: “Both the UID and the NPR projects are based on a technology that is flawed. The technology of biometrics has never been tested on such a large population. Even on a tiny population, as in Seoul (South Korea), it does not work for 50 per cent people.” D’Souza insisted that the UID’s claim of reducing duplication was wrong, as it would only “multiply the problem”.

D.M. Diwakar, director, AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, academics N.K. Choudhary and Vinay Kanth were also present at the meeting.

Gopal Krishna, member, CFCL, said: “The UID requires biometric data like photograph, fingerprints and iris scanning. This is not good for India. Countries like the USA, the UK, China and the Supreme Court of Philippines have already rejected it.”

The Bihar government had signed a memorandum of understanding with the UIDAI on August 20, 2010. The recent report by the multi-party parliamentary panel on finance cited global experience as well as citizens’ testimony to reject biometric data-based identification of Indians.

Diwakar said: “In the aftermath of this report (by the parliamentary panel), the continuation of this project and the ongoing collection of demographic and biometric data needs to be rigorously examined, as also its ramifications for the project in Bihar.”

He added that both the UIDAI and the NPR are involved in similar exercises resulting in extraordinary amount of duplication of work.

2206 - Bihar Government Should Put A Stay On The Execution Of The Aadhaar Related Projects By Gopal Krishna - Counter Currents

12 January, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Patna: A compelling logic has emerged for the Bihar Government to put a stay on the execution of the aadhaar related projects in the state following a revealing report of a multi-party Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Finance that considered the National Identification Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill, 2010 and following the grave concerns expressed by eminent citizens, former judges and academicians. Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had signed a MoU with Bihar Government on August 20, 2010 without any legal and constitutional mandate.

This disdain for the law has been characterised by the Standing Committee as `unethical and violative of Parliament's prerogatives'. Citizens have been protesting against the UID and NPR based MINIC project across the country from the very outset but prior to PSC’s report it was ignored. By now it is clear that it is an unnecessary project which must be stopped.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance considering the National Identification Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill, 2010 presented its report to the Parliament on December 13, 2011. The report rejects biometric data based identification of Indians. The report is a severe indictment of the hasty and `directionless' project which has been "conceptualised with no clarity of purpose". Even the functional basis of the Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI is unclear and yet the project has been rolled out. The Standing Committee found the biometric technology `uncertain' and 'untested'. As early as December 2009, the Biometric Data Committee had found that the error rate using fingerprints was inordinately high. In a recent interview to the press, the Director General and Mission Director of the UIDAI had admitted that fingerprints are likely not to work for authentication. The error rate could end up excluding up to 15% of the population. Yet, the UIDAI has gone on with the exercise.

There is no data protection law in place. Even though the government had recognised the need for a law to deal with security and confidentiality of information, imposition of obligation of disclosure of information in certain cases, impersonation at the time of enrolment, investigation of acts that constitute offences and unauthorised disclosure of information, the Unique Identification (UID) project was allowed to march on without any such protection being put in place.

The Parliamentary Report has raised questions of great severity about the legality and constitutionality of the Unique Identification (UID) project. It has acknowledged the many concerns that have been voiced in the past two years about the absence of a feasibility study, no cost-benefit assessment, uncertain and untested technology, an enrolment process that has national security repercussions, the lack of data protection and privacy legislation and the disrespect for Parliament by going ahead with a project that was pending parliamentary approval. It is also noticed that the data that is being collected is not being held by a government agency, about which the National Informatics Centre has expressed anxiety.

Prof. D M Diwakar, Director, ANISS said, in the aftermath of this report of the PSC, the continuance of the project as also the ongoing collection of demographic and biometric data needs to be rigorously examined, as also its ramifications for the project in Bihar. UIDAI has been trying to push for the adoption of the UID through multiple committees of several ministries and for the re-engineering of current systems to fit the requirements of the UID. There have been attempts to withdraw services such as LPG if a person has not enrolled for a UID. The creeping of voluntariness into compulsion through threat of discontinuance of services has been roundly castigated by the Standing Committee.

There has been an extraordinary amount of duplication of work. The NPR is doing the same exercise, except that the Ministry of Home Affairs has found that the excessive outsourcing and the methods used by the UIDAI for enrolment make the data inaccurate and insecure. The multiplicity of Registrars with whom the UIDAI has entered into MoUs produces their own problems of duplication. The Standing Committee is categorical that the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) constituted for the purpose of collating the two schemes namely, the UID and National Population Register (NPR), has failed.

The project has been replete with unanswered questions. The 17 eminent citizens, as also other civil society activists and academics, had asked that the project authorities acknowledge that many countries had abandoned identity schemes such as had happened in the UK, China, USA, Australia and the Philippines. The Standing Committee has taken on board studies done in the UK on the identity scheme that was begun and later withdrawn in May 2010, where the problems were identified to include "(a) huge cost involved and possible cost overruns; (b) too complex; (c) untested, unreliable and unsafe technology; (d) possibility of risk to the safety and security of citizens; and (e) requirement of high standard security measures, which would result in escalating the estimated operational costs."

Echoing citizens’ concerns, the Parliamentary Committee has noted that the government has “admitted that (a) no committee has been constituted to study the financial implications of the UID scheme; and (b) comparative costs of the aadhaar number and various existing ID documents are also not available.” It discloses that while the UIDAI was constituted on January 28, 2009 without parliamentary approval, and UID numbers were begun to be rolled out in September 2010, the Detailed Project Report of the UID Scheme was done much later in April, 2011. The Standing Committee expressed its anxiety that, the way the project had been run, “the scheme may end up being dependent on private agencies, despite contractual agreement made by the UIDAI with several private vendors.” The report records the views of Dr Usha Ramanathan, a noted jurist saying, “It is a plain misconception to think that the executive can do what it pleases, including in relation to infringing constitutional rights and protections for the reason that Parliament and legislatures have the power to make law on the subject.” In view of the above, the Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) signed by UIDAI with the partners including all the States and Union Territories, 25 financial institutions (including LIC) to act as Registrars for implementing the UID scheme has become of doubtful legality.

Prof. (Dr) Mohan Rao, Centre for Social Medicine & Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University said, UID is dangerous for public health. It should be rejected unequivocally because it violates confidentiality and privacy which is considered sacred in medical practice and is sought to be used for accuracy in clinical trials". At the meeting J T Dsouza, Expert, Biometrics Technology, Mumbai said, "Both the UID and NPR project has been about technology that is flawed, with risks to national and individual security, ill conceived in its aims and uses, and has attempted to occupy a place where it can be above the law." In relation to biometrics, the NPR too is guilty of going beyond the mandate give to it by law. Neither the Citizenship Act 1955 nor the Citizenship Rules of 2003 permit the collection of biometrics. The Standing Committee, recognising this, has asked that the use of biometrics in the NPR be examined by Parliament. Till then the collection of biometrics must be suspended. “It is apprehended that once the database is ready it can be used to eliminate minority communities, migrants and political adversaries by some regime which finds them unsuitable for their political projects. The fact is a centralized electronic database and privacy both are conceptually contradictory; it is advisable to let it remain in decentralized silos something which even the central government’s Discussion Paper on Privacy implied,” said Gopal Krishna, Member, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties.

Taking cognizance of these concerns, Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS), a civil society organization based in Delhi working with the homeless, has disassociated itself from UID Number project which was being undertaken under Mission Convergence in Delhi. Withdrawal of IGSSS that works in 21 states of the country merits the attention of all the states and civil society organisations especially those who are unwittingly involved in the UID Number enrollment process. In its withdrawal letter IGSSS said, “we will not be able to continue to do UID enrolment, as we discussed in the meeting of 10th May 2011.” It is clear that both Mission Convergence and UIDAI have been hiding these crucial facts. The letter reads, “IGSSS like many other leading civil society groups and individuals are opposed to conditional cash transfers and the UID will be used to dictate it.”Most manual workers of both organised and unorganised sector lose their finger prints. The project claimed to work for them but it is they who would get excluded. It is not the question of onetime cost being incurred but also of the recurring cost of the UID and NPR project that reveals its character which does not have any constitutional or rational basis.
 
A Round Table on the PSC Report and its implications for the Unique Identification (UID) project and for the Union Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR) and the issuance of Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) was organised on January 10, 2012 at AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANISS), Patna. It was organised jointly by A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) and CFCL. This meeting was a follow up to the Round Table on Unique Identification (UID) project & Bihar Govt's role held on 3rd January, 2011, the National Seminar on Idea of Unique Identification (UID) Project held on February 21, 2011 held in the state capital. Several eminent intellectuals from various sections of society expressed their concerns about the effect of this project on the liberty of citizens and sovereignty of the country.

It emerged that journalists appear to have been compelled to accept biometric identification in the offices where they work. They have been made to accept it as a fait accompli. As a consequence they have not reported about violation of privacy rights due to biometric identification of citizens and residents of India under UID and NPR.

For Details: Gopal Krishna, Member, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties, E-mail:krishna1715@gmail.com