Slashdot Mirror
India's Billion User Biometric Odyssey
mask.of.sanity writes "A bold new biometric identity system is being deployed across India in a bid to combat rampant welfare fraud. The mammoth system will collect the iris and fingerprint records on a voluntary basis of every one of India's 1.2 billion men, women and children. The Aadhaar project runs three trillion biometric identity matches every day — all on a small data center of commodity blade servers."
If you read down into the article you will see the court aspect that is news :)
"On Sunday"....."successfully petitioned the Supreme Court in that country to restrain moves by state governments to make Aadhaar mandatory for public services."
As linked, more at:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/aadhaar-infringes-on-our-fundamental-right-to-privacy/article5182765.ece
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This was rolled out 2 years ago.
The intended use:
When a unique ID is issued, you can optionally associate a bank account with it. Govt. will transfer welfare benefits directly to that account, "avoiding" corruption. Many are miffed by this as they stand to lose control over, benefit distribution and there by votes.
System abuse scenario is plenty, as your iris scan, finger prints(all 10) are associated with the ID.
Funnily, the ID states that this is only for identification, and not a document of citizenship.
This system is guaranteed to fail. As I understand it, the problem it is meant to address is welfare fraud - criminals collecting the welfare of the poor for themselves.
Best case, this works for a year or two as the criminals figure out how to spoof the biometrics. Maybe local gangsters force the poor people to give up their biometrics - take their prints and photos of their irises and then use copies (ala the recent iphone hack and the similar spoof via a photograph of the original iris). If the scanners at the welfare locations are manned, they just need to bribe the guy manning them into letting them use the spoofs. Undoubtedly the guy manning the system is going to be some low-paid peon anyway.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They are able to scan 1M people in one day(!), so it takes over 3 years to scan all 1200M people.
One scan takes about 5 megabytes, so 1200M scans takes 6000 terabytes:
http://searchbusinessintelligence.techtarget.in/feature/Aadhaar-project-data-collection-An-interview-with-Mindtrees-CEO
Architecture details:
http://www.biometrics.org/bc2012/presentations/UIDAI/UID%20BSP%20update%20Kris%20ver%202%201040.pdf
when did India get a "Constitution"?
Wikipedia says:
The Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, and came into effect on 26 January 1950.
This is a country where family members might, and occasionally do, bribe the local clerk to have you declared dead of natural causes, so they can take over your land and other belongings. Biometrics can't solve that...
WTF? That's the problem biometrics were designed to solve. Say my family asserts I'm dead and goes to court to claim their rightful inheritance. I turn up, press a grimy thumb on the judges notepad and say "match that", case closed! The idea that better identification makes it easier for someone to steal your identity is pure nonsense. The reason your example scenario doesn't happen regularly in the west is precisely because we already have well established systems to uniquely identify individuals, a practice that goes at least as far back as William the Conquer and his Doomsday book
If you don't have a reliable way to identify property owners then you can't have reliable property law. If you don't have reliable property law then you can't have capitalism. Of course, outside the west the unwashed masses often do not have any officially recognised ownership of the land they have lived on for centuries/millennia. That lack of legal recognition is the reason multi-nationals can and do buy/lease huge chunks of land from third world governments and then hire mercenaries to rid "their property" of "lawless vandals and trespassers".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is SERIOUSLY being discussed as just an IT issue, without any of the MASSIVE social and political issues involved?
I'll pass.
That is the problem biometrics were INTENDED to solve. But all wishful thinking aside, so far nobody has been able to DESIGN a biometrics system that actually solves it.
Nirvana fallacy
Just because it doesn't solve the problem 100% doesn't mean it isn't damn useful.
I'm not saying it isn't evil, but in India it may be the lesser of two evils.
No sig today...
If you are saying Biometric systems are not foolproof from a security perspective I agree. But if you extrapolate that to "biometric data used in Aadhar will make the scheme fail" - then you have no clue whatsoever about the existing system and how Aadhar uses biometric data.
AADHAR replaces the existing archaic mostly pen and paper 19th century PDS models - Public Distribution Systems - usually through 'Ration Cards' - to deploy benefits.
There will be some amount of fraud in any system which is used widespread. People lose their identity in the West. Social Security Numbers or Social Insurance numbers are misplaced or stolen or identity hijacked. But for all practical purposes they work as intended Your social security card is only a piece of green paper with your name and number...the number is your username. And you do not need a password.
The Aadhar number is only a username. The photo of the person, the address together with biometric data are added. It is for identification, not to swipe and open a door!
For the AADHAR system in India, the intentions and purposes of using biometric data is not security, but identification. And identification works on different levels, biometrics is only one of them. There is no village / town / city in India where you present a photo ID and a machine scans it and gives you benefits - there is a person behind the counter. Thats the first step. There are other checks and balances.
Still, local rowdies might abuse the system. Some corrupt officials might misuse their powers and try to pocket the proceeds. But this is a change which the country needed.
(As a side note: Most states in India give 25 kilos of rice to a family of four for Rs 1 a kilo - something like 0.016 cents a kilo - to anyone belonging to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) card holders. Some of the rice returns to the market when the BPL card holders sell the extra to local shops or hotels. No system can stop this nonsense!)
Tat Tvam Asi