'Big Brother' In India Requires Fingerprint Scans For Food, Phones, Finances (nytimes.com)

The New York Times reports of the Indian government's intent to build an identification system of unprecedented scope. The country is reportedly "scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents (alternative source) and connecting the data to everything from welfare benefits to mobile phones." Here's an excerpt from the report: Civil libertarians are horrified, viewing the program, called Aadhaar, as Orwell's Big Brother brought to life. To the government, it's more like "big brother," a term of endearment used by many Indians to address a stranger when asking for help. For other countries, the technology could provide a model for how to track their residents. And for India's top court, the ID system presents unique legal issues that will define what the constitutional right to privacy means in the digital age. The government has made registration mandatory for hundreds of public services and many private ones, from taking school exams to opening bank accounts.

Technology has given governments around the world new tools to monitor their citizens. In China, the government is rolling out ways to use facial recognition and big data to track people, aiming to inject itself further into everyday life. Many countries, including Britain, deploy closed-circuit cameras to monitor their populations. But India's program is in a league of its own, both in the mass collection of biometric data and in the attempt to link it to everything -- traffic tickets, bank accounts, pensions, even meals for undernourished schoolchildren.

Comments

Most western countries essentially have this

[Kjella]

All sorts of official activity here in Norway is linked to my "fødselsnummer", essentially my DOB + a 5-digit code to make it unique assigned at birth. Immigrants and others with business in Norway get a D-number which is the same only in a different number series. Can't open a bank account, can't pay taxes, can't own property, can't really do anything official without it. That was all well and good, but then the US started pushing for biometric passports and around here a country is the size of a US state so practically everybody has to have a passport. So since 2010 that all goes into a big database and since you have to renew them every ten years it's now pretty much the entire population. The only thing that prevent them from using it like in India is the law, all the data is already connected and linked.

Singapore has it, sweden has it...

[Daneel Olivaw R.]

In singapore it was called Nric/FIN, linked to tax, bank, mobile, all govt services and then I first came to sweden, I had restricted to my new swedish bank account among other things till I got "swedish id" card. It is used everywhere from new house search, new mobile number, authentication in any swedish service (not just govt services, include insurance/ investment / share market/ etc.) TBH, I find having this convenient so I do not have to register in multiple places. I understand the concern about hacks like equifax one. There is a solution for that Blockchain based stuff like "civic" (yes, you hate blockchain I get it) In india's case, it helps with reducing corruption already (no, you can't have oversight without data and some centralized way to identify what the whole population does), and authorizing myself with fingerprint in a bank is kinda convenient considering the fact the each of my signature is unique despite my best effort to duplicate. My point is, NYT tends to blow things out of proposition and whatever is happening in india has already been done in at least sg and sweden and I have not seen any outraged articles about that. My point is