Slashdot Mirror
India Scans a Billion Irises In Interest of National Security (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Indian government is using a loophole to fast-track legislation to allow federal agencies access to its database of 1 billion individuals' finger prints and iris scans. The Aadhaar database was set up in 2009 to 'streamline' benefit payments and help control fraud. The programme claims to have saved an estimated 150 billion rupees (approx. $2.2 billion) between 2014-2015. Privacy advocates are expressing fears that an approval in parliament could facilitate a police state, with data used to silence individuals considered as potential security threats, as well as presenting an enormous risk if breached.
It is not in interest of national security, rather in interest of preventing leakages in government subsidies. The program is voluntary, if you don't want subsidy don't enrol yourself, as simple as that.
Second part is that the program is running since 2009 without any legal backing or any government legislation. Present government is try to regulate the database and limit the usage of the collected data to just its intended purpose.
In spite of all safeguards, just like any other database this may also be breached but now there is a punishment in unlawful usage, which was missing till today even though data was already collected since 2009. And, really government cannot use this database for any of nefarious purpose as it just links names with fingerprints and Iris data, without any record of your caste, religion, mother tongue or even citizenship status.