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."
I hope they don't have to stand in a queue!
also for all those people who are 1 in a million there are a thousand identical biometric cards.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
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.
I think they aim for this move to benefit the poor as well. When they have an ID number it's going to be easier for them to use their rights, such as voting or obtaining state handouts.
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.
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.
and you're not required to have any of them to live in the u.s.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
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.
Theres only so much you can do for poverty. Programs are already in place for them.
Its no different in the rest of the world. Government makes priorities and budgets. Id hate to see an entire nation held back because there will always be poor people. Cannibalizing the good parts of government to just hand out meals is never a sustainable policy.
That said, there can be social goods from good accounting like this. More people paying taxes, better census, jobs created, better tracking of migrations, identification of criminals, etc etc.
Spot on - the UK recently gave up on ID cards because it was (amongst other reasons) too costly.
How on earth is India going to afford it with 20 times the population and 51 times less per capita GDP? Something's not right here.
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.