Slashdot Mirror
Biometric IDs For Every Indian Citizen
wiedzmin writes "This month, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID) number for 'anytime, anywhere' biometric authentication. While enrolling with the UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might require a UID number in order to transact business. Usha Ramanathan, a prominent legal expert who is attached to the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in the national capital, said that, 'taken to its logical limit, the UID project will make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to undertake a simple task such as traveling within the country without a UID number.' Next step, tying that UID number and biometric information to to their RIM BlackBerry PIN number."
The difference seems to be that this number is tied to a fingerprint, iris scan, and facial photograph. That's a lot scarier than my social security number currently is.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
thats really special they want to Biometric id a billion people Im sure that won't be used in anyway to reflect the cast system in india.... you know like those people with pay as you go instead of iPhones. Im so glad America doesn't do any business in India can you imagine what would happen if they had access to all of our personal information?
The difference seems to be that this number is tied to a fingerprint, iris scan, and facial photograph. That's a lot scarier than my social security number currently is.
A) Not trolling. Mods, get your shit together. This is trolling (NSFW).
B) Reply is correct in that, yes, a difference exist; the country is requiring biometric information for unique identification. Although some could argue picture, birth cert. etc for a SSN card are similar, this is one step further. The summary (FTA) makes the point that if this UID become a ubiquitous requirement, well, your biometric identity will be stored by the government. This could be a good thing. It could be bad. Who knows. I do know that I do now trust American authorities with my biometric identity; we all know how tight their data retention and security policies are.
With that said, coming to a country near you. Minority Report!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
And [the Antichrist] causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save [except] he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. Rev 13:16-18 KJV
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
The original intent of this ID is create something akin to the social security number in the US.
I'll tell you two important reasons for this
1. Make resource allocation more efficient.
For example, there is a concept of basic items like rice, wheat etc... being sold subsidized to poor people.
That mechanism is very inefficient and red tape laden presently.The ID is supposed to streamline it .
2. Currently there is no concept credit history in India other than a credit card.
There is no way a dealer would sell you a TV on credit unless you bring somebody known the dealer along with you.
Imagine US without SSN. That is what it is now in India. very inefficient.
Do you REALLY want to be tied to xXxcockxhungryxXx@aol.com for the rest of your life?
der dee der.
Yeah, "crime prevention" more like dissident prevention. Lets see here, everything is tied into a single database which ties in voting, economics, etc. tied into a fingerprint database. A few forged prints here and there and you have a rock solid case to charge any dissident.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
India has a much less uniform naming system, with a lot more duplicate birthdays + names, and much less variance in traits. How many Amrish Patels exist with the same name, color hair, color eyes, and same birthday in India?
My name is not too common, but still I have a duplicate in my home US state - same name and same birthday for two people. That's fine most of the time, but the other guy is a felon, and the state does not require SSN when you are arrested. Therefore, they cannot distinguish me from the felon. My insurance was cancelled retroactively for 1 month while I was out of town. (thanks to Choicepoint for incorrectly associated his name and criminal record with my insurance - you should opt out). My voter registration was cancelled since they do not use a common primary key for voters.
Therefore I prefer a real unique identifier that the state government would respect and correctly associate with me. Since the state uses drivers licenses as their primary key, and the feds use SSN as their primary key, I can have different identities in different states, and the cops may accuse me of being the escaped felon one day when I am innocent.
I don't like the idea of biometrics, but I also don't trust an inaccurate primary key as my identification. A name + birthday != unique.
The enforcement of privacy should be in the way they allow usage of the identity. Credit and Taxes perhaps are tier 2 concerns compared with entering and leaving the country.
Just a thought...
... someone forgets to use unsigned instead of signed and you end up wrapping around to being a negative person?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Not in Canada, there's strict laws about who can ask for a SIN (our SSN). Basically, only your employer and the tax man, as it's only used for tax purposes. I couldn't even tell you what mine is, because I don't carry the card for it, and nobody ever asks for it.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
I propose we call it the Caste'r-Card.
That way every checkpoint can require Caste'r-Card and Visa to get in.
You seem to have a lot of faith in government (or in your government).
The reason Slashdotters (and others) are skeptical of government power is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
FYI, India is at 74 on the corruption index.
By the way, an ad that pops up when searching for india corruption index is: http://indiaunheard.videovolunteers.org/?s=corruption&x=0&y=0&gclid=CLm1qair-aMCFQtN5wod2T5cGw, which details a lot of corruption. The more tools you give government, the more harm they can do.
It's naive to think that government officials won't use the awesome amount of cross-linked information for their own purposes.
Also, you must likely not be a member of any kind of minority or repressed group (there are such in every country).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Not to mention, names can change through a person's life, say by marriage, or by religious conversion. Or maybe simply because someone doesn't like their current name. Or because they're the-artist-formerly-and-now-currently-known-as-Prince.
In India, it becomes even more difficult - I see newspaper reports every day with people named as "A" alias "B"; not necessarily for illicit purposes, but just because they may be called differently by different people. Besides, I (for example) don't really have a "family name" - I have a given name and a couple of other identifiers. Even for those who do have "family" names, it's more of a "community" name. For example, the name "Singh" would indicate a North Indian, either a Sikh, or one of the many Hindu clans that use the name. It's not just likely that someone bearing the same first + last name would be pretty similar in physical characteristics, it would be almost a given.
Quite frankly, I'm glad we're finally getting this.
I once was talking about biometrics with a preacher whose PC I was installing. The whole bit where the guy had his entire life and house controlled by the RFID chip in his hand had folks talking, so I naturally assumed a preacher would think Revelations. "Nope, not worried about that in the least" When I asked him why he said "Do you really think a being THAT old, that originally stood at the side of God, would be THAT obvious? It is so much easier to do, and the public will NEVER catch on". When I asked him how he asked me to tell him my last three SS digits, which of course I could from memory. He then emphasized this passage "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads . He said we ALREADY had a mark, and all it would take is a national rationing system like in time of worldwide disaster to make it true. While I don't believe in religion, I have to admit I couldn't think of a comeback for that one.
As for TFA, in many ways I feel sorry for India. While we were able to gradually progress they are basically trying to jump from third to first world pretty much in super fast forward. The logistics of doing that and dealing with the unreal amount of info one has to collect to keep from having widespread fraud in the digital age is just insanity. While I can understand them wanting to take any shortcuts they can gvet, tying this much info without a hell of a firewall around it will come back to bite them in the ass if they aren't careful.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
At least this is happening in India, not in a country that actually matters globally. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that have to deal with it, but if they're not willing to fight for their freedom, then this is what they'll get. At least in the U.S. we've had our experience with SSNs and the more intelligent members of our population (the ones that aren't out to dominate others - that caveat has to be added, since there's plenty of intelligent people who have no respect for freedom, responsibility, or accountability) should, mostly, be able to understand why a program like this is a very, very bad idea for those of us who value our freedom. SSNs are bad enough as-is - a government program that has become a tool of the private business sector as well, tracking every significant purchase or decision a man makes in his life. I'll undoubtedly be haunted the rest of my life by the problems I had when I was married, despite the fact that I made the best decisions that I could at the time (some of which were forced by the economy, some by personal circumstances, some by business matters gone awry)..
Actually, what bothers me the most about identification systems like this is the invasion of one's privacy. You will never have a chance to start over after losing everything, any person at all may be tracked by government agencies much easier, et al. It makes evil deeds on the behalf of so-called "authorities" (be they governing bodies, businesses, credit tracking agencies, or what-have-you) much easier to accomplish, while offering nothing in return to the citizens subjected to such measures.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
What will this do for Lal Bihari and the many other people declared legally dead (while still possessing for all intents and purposes all characteristics of a living person if not legal identification)? If the answer is "nothing," then I don't see that this is much of an improvement or advancement in the task of maintaining records on your population.
/* Yes, corruption can override anything. I know. */
If your Social Security Number is your "true name" then you told this preacher the most powerful part, quite casually.
The first three digits are location. Anyone doing a tiny bit of research can find that out about you, and the next two digits are "lot number." This can be guessed pretty accurately by knowing the time of birth. If you can bracket the birth date with others' whose lot numbers you know, you can determine it as well.
That leaves four digits to uniquely and "secretly" identify you. Of which you gave up three without any prodding....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
There are many benefits to having a national ID system that go well beyond the SSN in the US. For example, authorities may finally have a pretty good idea how many folk live in a particular area, which helps for voting, disaster-relief, and other efforts traditionally spearheaded by the authorities. Similarly, the use of one unified system that does not rely on the presence of a physical card could hopefully make law enforcement a bit better at avoiding false positives and negatives.
In a country with over a billion inhabitants, having a system that assigns a ID number which is anchored by multiple biometric identifiers seems like a pretty good start, assuming the back end is secure, hard to tamper with, etc. This is what worries me though - similar previous Indian Government efforts, such as "untamperable" electronic voting machines designed for the Indian elections, have been proven to be quite vulnerable to tampering. Similarly, given how easy it can be to bribe corrupt officials, I wonder what the quality of the data will be once it has been entered / maintained / etc. for a while.
The bottom line is that systems which rely on aggregating a lot of data have to be pretty resistant to being fed garbage in the first place and/or manipulated in the future. This is where Indian institutions have to do better in the future and one good reason why India lags other nations as badly as it does. And yet, I imagine the system that is being presented will still be light-years ahead of what India has now.
Try dealing with insurance companies, buying a house, even getting a simple loan on a used car that you'll pay off in 6 months. Things like that are interconnected due to your SSN being used to track you and your "credit score" (an arbitrary number that isn't affected much by any good credit actions, or payment of past debts, but is heavily penalized for the slightest failure to pay anything; I've literally had a home loan turned down because I didn't pay off the last 5 dollars on a loan for a laptop due to a billing error). While this state of affairs may or may not be the desired result of the decision to assign SSNs to citizens, it still causes more harm than good. Anyone who gets ahold of your SSN can damage you in many ways. For example, I recently went to the ER at my local hospital. I got into an argument with the head nurse about whether or not I could go outside and smoke a cigarette and wait for the pain medication to take effect before they (with my assistance, since I don't permit anyone to work on an injury that I can do myself) cleaned and dressed the gunshot wound. So instead of getting treatment, I was told that I was "discharged" upon my return from my cigarette break.
And yet they'll be hounding me for money for services rendered, despite the fact that they did nothing except look at the wound, go "yep, you've been shot, the bullet exited your body, we need to give you some pain medicine and dress that wound" (since I'd already stopped the bleeding and all that before I got to the ER). They'll try to bill my insurance company and try to bill me, despite the fact that they did nothing other than provide me with a room for an hour. If they didn't have my SSN, they would have a much harder time doing that, since my name is relatively common, I didn't give them my correct address, and I can tell my insurance company to deny the claim.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
I know it's old but... India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society
"ZeroPaid has a fascinating roundup of news stories surrounding the latest surveillance laws passed in India, including a first-hand account of someone writing from inside India. The legislation in question is the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006, which was recently passed in the Indian parliament. Things you can't do with the new legislation include surfing for news in Bollywood and looking up porn on the internet. The legislation also allows all transmissions over the internet to be monitored for any form of lawbreaking and permits a sub-inspector to break into your house to make sure you aren't browsing porn on your computer."
Democracy is null and void for the moment.
The reason Slashdotters (and others) are skeptical of government power is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Now I do agree with you. I would not like to see this much information so easily collated in the hands of administrative authorities and I would add that it's not only governments, but also powerful private interests which would value access to such information about individuals. However, mindlessly repeating glib cliches is a poor way of demonstrating scepticism.
Does absolute power really corrupt absolutely? I sincerely doubt it. Is there even anything approaching a (negative) correlation between some index of government power and the corruption index you cite? China which is marginally less corrupt on that index appears to have far more authoritarian control, the bottom position is shared between Myanmar where the state rules with an iron fist and Somalia which has seen a complete collapse of state power, while Germany, which for decades has required citizens to carry an identification pass bearing a unique number ID is among the least corrupt.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
As soon as the zebra's get together and hire machine gunners to defend their watering holes from lions, they're going to need some sort of way to determine that all the zebra's chipped in to pay for it.
Then again, they'll probably just use some sort of barcode scanner.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
So India is home to the "best and brightest" huh? This proves the country is populated by idiots and mindless drones willing to voluntarily enslave themselves to the government masters. May a thousand plagues beseige you.
Why? It is voluntary. What happens if only 1% of the Indian people actually allow themselves to be scanned? That would be a powerful signal to the governemnet that people don't want this system.
... You also have an easier time being sure someone is who they say they are ...
The problem, as I see it, is that people are led to believe that such a biometric system is infallible and therefore unquestioningly accept such proffered 'ID' as secure. Given that such biometric IDs simply aren't infallible this means that those who wish to offer a false identify can do so more readily because no one questions the biometrics. The other side of the coin is that if people always do question (ie mistrust) the Biometrics (as indeed they should!) then they are no better than the old system.
Simply put, Biometrics aren't the answer ... now what was the question again?
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
What exactly is wrong with having a Unique ID number?
People with lower UIDs end up with a superiority complex.
All it needs is proper implementation and security.
OK, now I've worked in 'Computing' for 30 years or so and I know the only way to guarantee that a computer system is 100% secure is to not have it connected to anything else and for it to be stored in a sealed room. This somewhat degrades the usefulness of the system for real-world applications.
In all areas of 'Security' you have to be successful at maintaining the security 100% of the time, whereas those who feel the need to breach your security only have to do so once, and they often have a really powerful inclination to do so. Indeed, it could be argued that the more successful the security is, the greater the value of breaking it because if such an ID system is perceived as 'bullet proof' and you are the only person to break in then you can sell fake or cloned ID's that will NEVER be questioned.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
> Every system is corrupt, even this one. If your authorities want to screw you, trust me, they don't need this. This is only for the better.
Faulty logic. This makes it far, far easier for the authorities to screw with you. How are you going to get on the internet, train, order tickets for flights abroad etc etc if you're going to get rejected because your number's on a database, having been added by someone who knows you and doesn't like you?
India doesn't matter globally? Try googling for the meaning of BRIC.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Hahahahaha, wait - you got shot, bandaged the wound, went to the ER, gave them a fake address, argued with the nurse, stepped out for a smoke break. Would you say this is a typical day for you?