India's Biometric Database Is Creating A Perfect Surveillance State -- And U.S. Tech Companies Are On Board (huffingtonpost.in)

Big U.S. technology companies are involved in the construction of one of the most intrusive citizen surveillance programs in history, HuffingtonPost notes in a new report. From the story: For the past nine years, India has been building the world's biggest biometric database by collecting the fingerprints, iris scans and photos of nearly 1.3 billion people. For U.S. tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, the project, called Aadhaar (which means "proof" or "basis" in Hindi), could be a gold mine. The CEO of Microsoft has repeatedly praised the project, and local media have carried frequent reports on consultations between the Indian government and senior executives from companies like Apple and Google (in addition to South Korean-based Samsung) on how to make tech products Aadhaar-enabled. But when reporters of HuffPost and HuffPost India asked these companies in the past weeks to confirm they were integrating Aadhaar into their products, only one company -- Google -- gave a definitive response.

That's because Aadhaar has become deeply controversial, and the subject of a major Supreme Court of India case that will decide the future of the program as early as this month. Launched nine years ago as a simple and revolutionary way to streamline access to welfare programs for India's poor, the database has become Indians' gateway to nearly any type of service -- from food stamps to a passport or a cell phone connection. Practical errors in the system have caused millions of poor Indians to lose out on aid. And the exponential growth of the project has sparked concerns among security researchers and academics that India is the first step toward setting up a surveillance society to rival China.

Comments

"revolutionary" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

> as a simple and revolutionary way to streamline access

Germany called, they want to remind you of a little time in history called WW I and II. Kind of ironic the companies involved in providing such services then, are still around today. IBM for example.

War and enslavement are extremely profitable.

Surveillance state? Yeah, right.

[mveloso]

You know, it's ridiculous that there are people that conflate identification with surveillance.

Establishing a person's identity is a fundamental part of any modern society. Are you who you say you are?

Otherwise, how can you tell one Singh from another?

In any case, what Liberal critics forget is that it's the intent. Why would the Indian government want to know what its citizens are doing? Is it a totalitarian state, like China? Not really. Could it be? Maybe, but India doesn't really have a history of strongman-type rule.

So why the whining?

Re:Surveillance state? Yeah, right.

[markdavis]

>"You know, it's ridiculous that there are people that conflate identification with surveillance."

Of course you need identification systems. But surveillance isn't possible or meaningful without identification. The problem comes when an ID system becomes mandatory or essentially mandatory for things it shouldn't be needed for in the first place. Making things worse is the technology now involved making things recorded, permanent, searchable, and sharable; all at little cost. For example, you should not need to prove WHO you are to buy alcohol. You only need to show an ID that a cashier can use to determine you are of age (and that the ID is reasonably of you and real) and the transaction is through and essentially anonymous. But somehow that is now morphing into SCANNING that ID, and STORING your full identification information. There is a huge difference. Once people get used to that, then the next stages kick in- full ID storage for OTC medications, then things that "might" be dangerous, then everything.

So it is not necessarily the presence of an ID system that is the problem, it is how it is used or when it is required to be used. In this article, it isn't just the ID, but the combination of that with biometrics, and then its [mis]use by big business that shows the path it is taking. It won't take long before just about ANYTHING an Indian citizen wants to do- government or private, in person or online, they will have to be ID'ed. Before the age of insanely powerful computers, massive networks, and ultra cheap storage, such ID'ing would be just an inconvenience. But IN that age, it is a privacy (and ultimately freedom) nightmare.

Re:Surveillance state? Yeah, right.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Of course you need identification systems. But surveillance isn't possible or meaningful without identification

You'd be surprised. Companies like Facebook are able to build detailed profiles of people who have never even had an account with them. They might even have the right name attached to it. Surveillance like that in the physical world has little to do with ID or biometric database in itself; it's about what is being scanned, stored and queried. If you show your ID to the store clerk at the off-license, he might remember your name but whatever, that's not surveillance. If he has to scan your ID and the info on it gets stored (probably attached to a list of your purchases) and shared with others, that's another matter. But if you're not asked to show ID because you're an old fuck like me, clearly over 18, the security camera will have a picture of your mug anyway; good enough for identification especially when cross referenced with other data points. Is the store camera footage shared with police or as security firm? Some of it is, and we've no idea what they do with it. You can be tracked without ID just fine.

A national ID system does not constitute a surveillance state, and it is not an essential ingredient of one either. It can help, and I agree that we should absolutely resist the tendency to ask for ID at every opportunity, because of "security", or convenience, or because "what do you have to hide?", but attacking national ID itself like the article does is missing the point.