Slashdot Mirror
India To Issue Over a Billion Biometric ID Cards
angrytuna writes "The Unique Identification Authority is a new state department in India charged with assigning every living Indian an exclusive number and biometric ID card. The program is designed to alleviate problems with the 20 current types of proof of identity currently available. These problems range from difficulties for the very poor in obtaining state handouts, corruption, illegal immigration, and terrorism issues. Issuing the cards may be difficult, however, as less than 7% of the population is registered for income tax, and voter lists are thought to be inaccurate, partly due to corruption. The government has said the first cards will be issued in 18 months."
The best part about biometrics, is, when someone gets your fingerprint, or makes a mold of your face after knocking you out with a billy club, you can totally..... uuuuhhhh.... get..a new one?
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
I hope they don't have to stand in a queue!
Outsource it to an American company!
Issuing the cards may be difficult
But spending the money sure won't.
In the business of government, as long as the money passes through your hands, you win.
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." -- Gerald R. Ford, in an address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974
a new state department in India charged with assigning every living Indian an exclusive number and biometric ID card.
OK, 1 billion should just about cover all the Indians living in the UK, Canada and the US, but what about all the rest?
PS: It's a joke. I for one welcome our corner store/curry house operating Indian overlords. Thank you come again!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Every single person in India should be assigned a 30-bit identification number. Problem solved!
For Bangladesh having 1093 people / square km, India with 349 people / square km is a paradise.
You know, there is a big world out there outside the US.
I wonder how many Bob Maharajapurams there are. I seem to get him every time I call tech support.
"German police can detain people who are not carrying their ID card for up to 24 hours."
Papers, please!
Sigh, if it hasn't happened already, SOMEBODY in the US government is going to try to convince us that we need to be more like India!
However, maybe this current clusterfuck will tie up so many Indian programmers, the US won't be able to export any more jobs.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
America has over 50 types of commonly used ID, and that's not even counting the several types of ID cards and drivers licenses that some states have, nor does it count military IDs, civilian-government-employee IDs, university-issued IDs, passports, and more.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
My driver's license has my photograph. Is that not a biometric?
When my wallet was stolen all I should simply had to go to the DMV and sign something, which would have verified my signature, and my photo would have verified that it was me. When I was pulled over, all I had to do was tell the cop my SS number and he could see that I was me and was licensed (I was warned to fix my tail light).
The DMV required an alternate form of ID (I'd already replaced my YMCA card; the Y was where the wallet was stolen) and a bank statement to verify my signature.
I think Illinois needs a new Secretary of State. The process was ludicrous, even though it only took a few minutes.
Free Martian Whores!
Oh ruddy ruddy heck, jolly well indeed!
Unique Identification Authority
Huh. Did they have a contest to come up with the most Orwellian sounding name? Are they a section of the Department Of Bureaus? :)
Leaving aside the technicalities of the project for a moment, these are strange priorities. India is not the only country to have lots of starving people and homeless, but instead of feeding them or building homes, they are to piss billions of Dollars giving them ID cards for the New World Order to track them.
Sick!
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Not that I look forward to being in a huge database, but I am curious how long it will take given that things are so chaotic in India.
Some years ago when the government decided to issue voter cards for everyone eligible to vote, everyone in my family who qualified went to get photographed etc and some months later the cards turned up... with everyone's data mixed up. So my father was not only a woman but the daughter of my sister who happened to be the wife of my mother and so on. And pretty much every family in the neighborhood had their's screwed up as well.
So one billion people and at least two trials.. I would give the program at least 10 years - and that is being optimistic, I think.
True, everyone wants to get out of india and into the land of milk and honey...
Yes I always call Bangladeshis, India's Mexicans
Lets just hope that these guys learn from the Germans and have a GOOD BACKUP of the private key for the CA. Although, I wonder how much the manufacturer of the cards would be willing to pay the operators to "loose" the backup tape.
Given the corruption they have now, what makes them think corruption won't continue?
Stealing someones biometric data will mean an increasing arms race for technology to identify someone. It will eventually fail as corrupt agencies and criminals have the same methods to read biometry data and create the id cards. As a way to slow this down - do not give the biometric data to the person, explained thus:
Instead, people should be issued replaceable, hard to fake credentials (ID cards) - that do NOT have biometric readings on them, rather just a long random number. These would be easy to read - and the random number identifies the holder.
Creation and issuing of credentials would be done only based on government-run biometric scans. The identifying agency keeps the biometric data secret at the time of issue or re-issue, and links the biometric data to the replaceable credentials/random number.
This way if an ID is stolen or in dispute, the person comes in, gets scanned again and a new credential/card/random number is issued and the old one is cancelled.
This allows one upside: no big, central DB of biometric data - each local area keeps their own. By removing a central identity DB, corrupt officials will have smaller targets to break.
Yeah, I agree that we need a new Slashdot category.
coding is life
And pocket lots of dosh in the process
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
No, both them and N. Korea, Pakistan plans to nuke their neighbors and live peacefully after it. You know, radiation, rain, winds, water supplies. They are all fine, such side effects will stop in that artificial map line we call "border" :)
No, you picture is not a considered true 'biometric' because it requires a human to decide 'sure I guess this looks like you'.
You mean like "Your fingerprint LOOKS like a 10-point match to the one we have on file" or "The DNA test output from your blood LOOKS like the one on file"?
Just as there are "face twins," two people whose faces are so similar they can be confused, there are probably "10 point fingerprint twins" and "current-generation-dna-test" twins among the earth's billions of inhabitants.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are many bad ideas about a biometric id card, but the one good thing about it should be the ability to FIX the problems they mentioned with no accurate census. Each person gets one card, they give fingerprints and show some kind of name proof. If the fingerprint is in the system, you don't get another ID.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The "predicted cost of £3 billion" (from TFA) works out to a cost of £2.50 per card per person. Anyone else think this seems a little optimistic, given I think highly secure identity cards cost a little more than that to manufacture, never mind the infrastructure costs involved?
(P.S. trying to get pound symbols to show up on Slashdot from an American keyboard sucks)
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
They have problems with people trying to get INTO India? I thought everyone wanted to get out!
Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Nepal
Terrorists from Pakistan
Refugees from Sri Lanka (and to a tiny extent, Burma)
You need to get out of your little well once in a while.
If the cards were piled on top of each other they would be 150 times as high as Mount Everest -- 1,200 kilometres.
India's legions of local bureaucrats currently issue at least 20 proofs of identity, including birth certificates, driving licences and ration cards. None is accepted universally and moving from one state to the next can easily render a citizen officially invisible -- a disastrous predicament for the millions of poor who rely on state handouts to survive.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
From the article: The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
I guess it would be more accurate to say, "The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 until he signed the Real ID Act into law in 2005."
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Did anyone else hear Iron Maiden in their heads as they read that headline?
You know, there is a big world out there outside the US.
And it all smells like ass.
Or cross the road. If you're a chicken.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
very badly. Considering there are different cards for almost everything in which you need an identification check, this was long required. I have card A for casting my vote, B for getting my LPG supply for cooking, C for getting subsidized food. If I lose any one of them, I have to go through the entire process again which involves around four to five working days and bribing corrupt government officials who are not ready to work. For getting a thing as simple as cellphone connection, I have to submit at least 3 identification documents - my voter card, my driving license and a college confirmation letter (in case you are a student). This has been done to check the use of mobile phones by terrorists, but since there is no standardized identification, it hurts the common man who just needs to get his work done. We are all looking forward to this. Lets just hope it gets through.
snark
And in about 5 years, illegal immigrants from the United States.
...I guess the insignificant problems of clean water and clean air, safe roads and reliable electricity can wait, as long as some idiotic solution to a non-extant problem can be pursued !
Sorry I can't be bothered to find the appropriate links to back me up, please see some of my previous posts on the miserable state of infrastructure in India.
The program is designed to alleviate problems with the 20 current types of proof of identity currently available.
So, they have 21 now?
Well I hope the Indian government knows that the 32-bit ID space is probably a tad too cramped...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Newsflash, Jan 26, 2013.
The state Department of Unique Identifiers (DUI) announced today that the project to issue Globally Unique Democratic Identifiers (GUDIs) is in serious jeopardy. Apparently, they budget called for just over 1 billion ID cards and while the procured one billion have been used, they acknowledged the presence of confirmed live people standing in queues across the country who could prove they were born on genuine Indian pavements. The spokesman also acknowledged confusion at media reports that the subset of people with an ID card did not overlap with the subset of people deemed alive or those known to have paid taxes or the subset claiming various government benefits.
When asked for a clarification, the minister in charge of the department agreed with the assessment of the situation but expressed his inability to verify the actual statistics. He sheepishly confirmed that he was not in possession of a valid ID card yet, nor was he aware of anyone in his immediate family or political circle with the required papers. He also vehemently denied knowledge of recent tabloid reports that his maid, driver and cook each possessed multiple ID cards.
Recent western media reports have raised privacy concerns over the ID program and DUI ability to control its direction. In a recent BBC interview, Ram Lal (no last name), a pavement dweller in Mumbai expressed dire concern when interviewed by a BBC reporter. Surrounded by his immediate family of 14 in his one-room shanty, he overcame his initial lack of comprehension about the notion of "privacy" and faulted the government for its insensitivity and draconian measures. When asked about his experience in using the global ID, Ram Lal expressed frustration at his inability to claim government benefits due to chronic IT issues. He was unable to comment on his experience with the income tax department, citing lack of experience.
Meanwhile, in the Indian border state of Bengal, the communist party government announced the opening of their Dhaka marketing office.
In other news, the Chinese premier congratulated India on discovering that it was the most populous country on the planet. The Chinese company in charge of mass production of ID cards promised to step up production.
OK, so 6B on the planet, at least 2B are Chinese...they're going to get biometrics from 1/2 the country?
OH! That'd be the 'untouchables', those who do the grunt work and die in the streets.
(If it were untrue, you could complain....)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Having spent a lot of time in India, those guys couldn't organize a meeting about writing an article about a potential piss up in a brewery. And this is the private sector, as soon as the Government gets involved there would be 400 forms to fill out in triplicate before discussing the running of the meeting (or the "runnage" of the meeting). And lets hope the people wanting to start the meeting are licensed organisers.
So the reason the current system don't work is only 7% of the population is paying income tax, and there is lots of corruption.
So the solution is a massive new government initiative to work around the cause of the current problems.
Yep, sounds like bureaucracy to me.
Question everything
Only the "living" Indians - well that's a relief. Of course, they believe in re-incarnation, so ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Say what you will, but I know India is too corrupt for anything. People commenting on the fact that there is too much illegal immigration from all the places in India, tend to forget that getting something like this ID is going to be easy for those people too once it is known how the system works. The government officials are too corrupt and too poor to not take a bribe for any work. So once you have enough money and know correct people, getting anything done in India is not a big deal. Now to deal with such a problem, the government has to start off by implementing the rules to curb the population. I know not one politician would have any balls to speak about the issue. Hell there are some politicians who have more kids themselves and will try to stop any kind of legislation to be passed for the same. None of the politicians give a dime about what the common man will suffer. Providing basic facilities for these people is just a promise for every politician in India and it shall always remain that way. For all this to change, may be the current and probably the next generation will have to make more compromises than many are willing to but change doesnt come overnight and it certainly doesnt without a cost.
Watch your Overlords as they beta test your future in 3rd world or smaller countries.
China, New Zealand, Finland, Thailand: Internet Censorship under different pretexts.
India: Biometric IDs.
Feel free to add to the list.
Seriously? Agent Orange ring a bell boy? /\\/
In a perfect world, DNA is reliable. The world isn't perfect. There are problems with collection and contamination, problems with human error and incompetence, and the fact that we rely on only a partial DNA sampling rather than a complete sequencing. This is further complicated by mutations within our own bodies and the occasional case of a person with more than one DNA, either due to a congenital issue, organ or bone marrow transplant, or other issue.
IMHO every supposed DNA match should be confirmed with an "extract all the data you can from the sample then compare it to the suspect's DNA, then explain any deviations or rule him out as a suspect.
Even with all these problems, in many cases it is more reliable than eyewitness identification, fuzzy video cameras, and non-DNA forensics. In the US criminal justice system, we have "beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard rather than "beyond an absolute doubt." For non-death-penalty cases, society has decided it's better to imprison a few innocent people than let a few BIGNUM go free. For death penalty cases attitudes are swinging to "if you aren't 100% sure don't kill him."
In any case, DNA should be preserved indefinitely after a conviction so it can be re-tested as more refined tests become available. What may be a "1 in a million chance he's not the man" today may be come "he's definitely not the man" 15 years from now, but only if evidence is preserved.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why not just tattoo the information directly onto their forehead or hand?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Life without intoxicating liquors and a good smoke is hardly living. *joke*
--
For those outside the US, most US states require people who look close to the legal drinking or tobacco-buying age to present proof of age, which "de facto" means a state- or federal-issued ID. The vendor *may*, at his own risk, accept school or other IDs but if he lets a bogus ID slip by, even a high-quality fake, he's in a lot more trouble than if he lets a high-quality fake government ID that's "good enough to fool most cops" slip by. In some areas, some vendors won't accept out-of-state IDs unless they are very familiar with that particular ID and common ways to make fakes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Agent Orange ring a bell boy?
Of course, I love Clue! Agent Orange in the jungle with the poison.
In some states, you only have to show ID if you are "fortunate to look younger than *insert over-the-hill-age-here*."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I must be thinking of the pre-digital age, when experts painstakingly compared a crime-scene print against a suspect's print under a microscope. The suspect's "rolled" fingerprints were subject to the distortions inherent in treating a non-cylindrical-object as if it were a perfect cylinder, and the crime-scene prints were subject to God-only-knows what kinds of smearing and other corruption.
Come to think of it, many of these defects still exist in the digital age, although things like 3-D cameras reduce this error, at least for the suspect's prints.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's India. If you don't understand, spend some time there, and not just going to touristy sites. It just has no chance of succeeding as a universal replacement IMO.
I have to mention this every time German ID cards are mentioned (as in the article): In Germany, there is no central database with all citizens recorded. The federal press is printing them for the local authority issuing the card, but it isn't keeping the record. A copy of the ID card is kept at the local authority. It's a decent system. I'm against a central database, but no identifictation system at all like the US and the UK is just a mess.
Nobody cares about dying citizens, big brother just wants to tag every living thing on the planet and track them using a database. It's all about control -- if can watch what someone is doing all the time, you then own that person and that's the real goal -- slavery. India's 60 years of freedom from ID cards has suddenly ended. What right does any govt have to tag and track activity of citizens -- that's an invasion of privacy.
If you want to assign an ID to a person, give them separate ID for each department. And, by law, they should not be allowed to cross-reference databases between departments to maintain privacy.
You're the expert, and claim Illinois has some cast iron ID. How do you then explain the millions of illegal aliens who freely live there, buy homes, drive cars, get bank accounts, get welfare, get utility accounts and cellphone accounts, etc? What are they using for ID and where do they get it, and as a follow up, why doesn't it stop? Doesn't this disprove how technically sophisticated the Illinois ID and system is? I read you state some of the ID machines were stolen..well..if they are compromised shouldn't they go to a different system them? Don't the ID cards themselves have an indicator and tag from which machine they were produced from, so that those people caught using bogus but official-looking ID could get nabbed? Even cheap printers have that now.
If it is like my state, I can answer those questions. Perhaps it is similar where you are and the problem isn't technical, but political.
Orders from the government to just look the other way and accept *anything* at all for ID from anyone who doesn't speak English as their first language. I have seen this occur on more than one occasion now. Regular folks who were born here and have the appropriate accent have to produce reams of documentation to get real ID, such as at the DMV, illegal aliens, hardly anything but a photocopy of some created drivel. Watched it real time down there getting my renewal, they even have a special clerk to help them. You can stand in line right there and watch this go down.. It's like they are a special protected class. I have personally watched this happen also in my bank as well, born here, have to produce ID to get an account, barely speak English, or don't speak any at all, the bank clerks just fill the paperwork out for them and no ID is even needed, I watched this happen.
Just wondering how it is in Illinois, I am in another state with a huge illegal alien problem. It exists because apparently the powers that be choose to want it to exist, no other reason that I can see for it.
Indian government always plan impractical, useless to people, high cost projects. Another example: Chandrayan Project ( Man mission to the Moon). ID cards to one billion people means it's a multi-billion dollar (or rupees) project. Huge oppurtunity for government officials and contractors (In interms of corruption).
Love me or leave me. Hey, where's everybody going?
Nandan Nilekani quit Infosys to head the govt project. The legislative of India is fast changing for good. Though movie stars and cricketers still find their way into the assembly, a good portion of the government is now made up of capable people. http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20090625/808/tnl-nandan-nilekani-to-head-unique-ident.html
This is not the first time India has sought to distribute a "universal" identity card. You have ration cards, PAN cards, state ID cards,... the list goes on. Each time they do this, some contractor who manufactures the cards (usually one owned by some politician), make an obscene amount of money. I guarantee you that 5-6 years down the line, there will be a new drive to push another "universal" identity card.
That's a lot of SG chips, people!! Whatsay we round them up and fire up some SOYLENT GREEN factories. No more hunger for the world. We can breed them. We can genetically engineer them. We can feed them, THEM! And think of all the new recipes and cookbooks, the market will be there. Thank God for slashdot since no where but slashdot can ideas like this flourish, and be welcome. Let's go!
Spot on - the UK recently gave up on ID cards
Not at all. The recent news was merely that it will no longer be compulsory for everyone to have the physical piece of plastic. But the National Identity Register (the thing that people are actually opposed to) is still planned.
From 2011, everyone renewing their passport will still have to pay the increased costs for an ID card (£93, plus £30 in processing fees to a private company to collect your fingerprints), be entered onto the database, and be subject to £1000 fines for failing to notify authorities of a change in personal details. The only choice is that you don't have to have the physical piece of plastic that you've still had to pay for. IIRC it's also planned for anyone getting a driving licence, along with other groups of people.
So it'll only be "voluntary" if you give up your right to a passport, and to drive (remember this is the UK, where most people travel to Europe at least, and have a passport). The scheme is still here to stay, and most of the population will be forced onto it.
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/30/passport-details-id-card-database
In fact, as an example of how the scheme is still moving forward, only recently did the Government approve the fines for failing to notify changes in personal details including address, name, nationality and gender. Why would they do that, if the scheme had really been abandoned?
> and voter lists are thought to be inaccurate
Really? Well, it's a good thing then that they're choosing not to clone that list for anything important.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.