1076 - How Aadhaar, or the UID project, can get you into deep trouble-Money Life
January 28, 2011 03:06 PM
Ramdass Keshavamurthy
_The UID project which is being rolled out with much fanfare by the government has innumerable pitfalls. Here are a few of them
Aadhaar with its biometrics and the ability to facilitate convergence of information-bona fide or otherwise-has the potential to compromise privacy and put people in trouble.
When such privacy concerns are raised, the oft-repeated rhetoric among the educated middle class is: "I am a law-abiding citizen and I do not have much to hide and fear. So, why should I be concerned with my personal data, including biometrics, being stored under the Aadhaar project, especially if it can make my life convenient?"
Well, if you are one of those who thought likewise, here are a few plausible ways in which you could be in trouble, thanks to Aadhaar and its indiscriminate use in the not too distant a future.
Scenario 1: Techie tries to change his job…
Ram is an upwardly-mobile young techie who is proud of his status. He is in love with the digital world; not bothered too much about issues around privacy. He is active on most of the social networking sites. He is proud of his connectedness. He has been the first one to get Aadhaar; he felt it would make his day-to-day transactions a lot more hassle-free. He has submitted his Aadhaar ID to all his previous employers, since it afforded him some additional benefits and privileges.
Recently, he has got a call from an MNC promising him an overseas assignment. He is excited about the opportunity. He has had a successful technical round. However, to his dismay, he is rejected after the HR round.
Trying to find the reason, he contacts an acquaintance in the company. To his surprise, he comes to know that the culprit is Aadhaar. A background check using Aadhaar by a company engaged by the MNC has revealed his problems with his boss in one of the companies he had worked for a long time back. He is not given a chance to explain himself but is presumed troublesome and rejected. He curses himself for being overzealous in his usage of Aadhaar.
Scenario 2: Sham tries to buy Medical Insurance...
Though Aadhaar was optional in the beginning, most of the clinics and hospitals have started insisting on it citing identity reasons. Sham is a middle-aged IT manager who has seen the convenience of using digital identity cards in his office. It is logical for him to think that using Aadhaar would prevent any misplaced identity. He does not think twice when someone asks him for Aadhaar.
Over the past few years, given the stress of his job, he has had episodes of "High Blood Pressure", treated occasionally at a few local clinics. In all those clinics he has unwittingly used Aadhaar. His doctors have told him that there is nothing chronic or serious about his occasional high BP. He has been able to manage his condition with minor lifestyle changes.
Now that he is approaching middle age, he decides to take out a medical insurance cover for himself. Most of the insurance companies have started insisting on Aadhaar for enrollment. After completing all the required formalities, he gets his insurance policy. He is puzzled to find that he has been denied insurance coverage for 'heart ailments'. He verifies that his BP, ECG and other conditions were normal during the prescreening test. On further questioning, he is told that he has a preexisting high BP condition. The culprit - Aadhaar!
The insurance company has done a background search on him using his Aadhaar ID and found out that he had taken some medicine for high BP sometime back in the past, though he is no longer on any medication. His argument that he has no chronic heart condition goes in vain.
Scenario 3: Saralamma becomes a suspect in a crime she did not commit…
Saralamma is a retired school teacher; very law-abiding. As soon as Aadhaar is rolled out, she is the first to get one. Someone has told her that her pension collection and bank transactions would be a lot easier with Aadhaar. She is not the one who is too concerned about what data is being collected; most of which she does not understand anyway.
Recently, she has received some arrears. She has decided to buy some silverware for her only daughter. She has checked out a specific set, but decides not to buy, as the cost is beyond her budget. After a few days, to her surprise, she gets a call from a security agency. There is a theft at the same jewelry shop she had visited. One of the items in the set that she had looked at is stolen. As part of the investigation, fingerprints are collected from items in and around the set. They are run against the biometrics stored by the UIDAI managing Aadhaar.
Alas, one of the fingerprints on the silverware matches that of Saralamma. She is asked to explain as to why she should not be considered a suspect. Saralamma is aghast as she does not understand how she got linked to the crime she did not commit!
Scenario 4: John loses money on a transaction he did not make…
John runs a travel business. He maintains his account with a cooperative bank which has signed up with Aadhaar for complete authentication services. In addition to the account number, he is required to give his Aadhaar number and fingerprints (biometrics) to complete any transaction.
One of his assistants has his eye on this account. He has found out that if he could capture the fingerprints of his boss, he could have fakes made to defraud the system. He transfers the drinking glass which has his boss' fingerprints to one of the petty shops which have recently sprung up to create fake fingerprints using digital scans, illegally.
With the dummy fingerprints of his boss in hand, he successfully withdraws the money. When John gets his monthly transaction report, he is shocked to find a huge withdrawal. When he questions his bank, he is told the Aadhaar-based biometrics has confirmed his identity and there is not much they can do about it!
Scenario 5: Ajay's son is denied admission to school …
Ajay has lived most of his life in the US. He has relocated back to India a couple of years back. He admits his son to one of the pre-schools. As part of the admission process he is asked for his son's Aadhaar; it has become more or less compulsory to monitor the progress of the child. Unfortunately, Ajay's son has some minor developmental disability. His pre-school documents this fact against his son's Aadhaar.
Now that his son is six years old, Ajay is desperately looking for a school for his son. He can even afford admission to any of the newly started international schools. To his surprise, he finds most of the schools denying admission. On investigation, he finds that the unique identity provided by Aadhaar is the cause. A background checking agency, employed by the schools, has done a search based on the Aadhaar ID and discovered that his son has a mild development disorder. Given that information, none of the schools want to take a chance!
The above examples are just a small sample of the scenarios that are very plausible. Though Aadhaar is currently optional, it is apparent that overtime it would be mandatory. Even if some of the scenarios depicted above can be avoided with stronger privacy laws, in a country where enforcement is lax, one wonders whether such misuses can be completely prevented.
Vulnerability of securely-stored digital information to theft has been exposed by recent leaks that have surfaced both nationally and internationally. As someone has commented, a safe digital record is an oxymoron. Some of the recent experiments have amply demonstrated how biometric fingerprints can be duplicated using technologies that are almost homemade. If you are still skeptical, read Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes's story, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.
(Ramdass Keshavamurthy is a Bengaluru-based Technology Consultant)
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RAMDAS KESHAVMURTHY
June 21, 2010
Aadhaar and privacy-I by Ramdass Keshavamurthy
Two of the major issues concerning Aadhaar revolve around the benefits of having an identity and the risks of losing privacy. This is the first part of a two-part series
As the implementation of Aadhaar, formally known as UID, gathers steam with the project entering the prototype implementation stage, we have started hearing dissenting voices questioning the need for such an intrusive ID, incurring a lot of public money. Questions are also being asked about the constitutionality of such an exercise. While it is easy to dismiss such objections as being alarmist, it is important to go into some of the issues being raised by the critics, especially in the context of the exaggerated claims of the proponents of Aadhaar.
The ideas around Aadhaar being not new, it is pertinent to review the status of similar schemes in other countries. In the USA, the Social Security Number, initially conceived as a number to track individuals in social security programs, has been in use for more than 50 years. A recent proposal by some US senators to introduce biometric Social Security cards has run into stiff opposition by privacy advocates and civil-society groups. The UK government had introduced a similar biometric national ID scheme some time back. The new government plans to scrap the biometric national ID scheme within 100 days, in addition to destroying all the biometric data that was collected. The exercise was deemed wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive.
In India, there have been various attempts for the creation of a national ID for a decade or more. However, the issue gathered momentum with the reinvention of the same in the form of UID, which has recently been rechristened as Aadhaar.
Aadhaar came into public consciousness after the UIDAI was established and the head of a corporate firm roped in as the chairman of the project. Thereafter, there were a series of seminars, analogous to marketing campaigns, advocating the positive benefits of Aadhaar. Some of the champions of UID, being influenced by notions in the IT world, looked at Aadhaar as a panacea for all ills surrounding public service delivery. The chairperson of UIDAI is reported to have even gone to the extent of saying that“The slogan of bijli, sadak, pani” is passé; 'virtual things' like UID number, bank account and mobile phone numbers are the in-thing.” This was almost to indicate the dawn of a new era with different priorities, making the earlier preoccupations irrelevant. Can anything be further from the truth than this?
One of the reasons for carrying this perception is that Aadhaar, though conceived at the government level, is currently championed by technocrats turned bureaucrats. These technocrats, who are significantly influenced by the products and processing in the IT world, want to replicate the same in the public sphere, often ignoring the complex realities of the real world. While the making of the biometric data and its management by itself has a significant technological content, its impact goes far beyond it as it covers the ordinary citizen and the wide social sector. Focusing too much on technology, the social and privacy issues were probably overlooked at the infancy. While the UIDAI tried to address some of these concerns later through seminars, they were not comprehensive enough to gather diverse public opinion. Even though the initial mandate of UIDAI was to focus on technology associated with biometric data, the casual utterances of key representatives, without adequate awareness of privacy issues, went beyond that to advocate the wider adoption of UID in both public and private spheres.
Two of the major issues concerning Aadhaar revolve around the benefits of having an identity and the risks of losing privacy. Proponents of the benefits are of the opinion that a lot of social welfare programmers intended for the poor do not reach them or are denied to them because of the issues surrounding identity. By fixing the issue of identity using Aadhaar, inefficiencies and irregularities surrounding the delivery and management of social services would be resolved.
This is a claim disputed by most of the social scientists/activists who feel that to be a gross over-simplification of the reasons for failures of social welfare schemes. For example, in most of the social welfare programmes where multiple agencies are involved, fixing individual identity does not necessarily stop corruption and pilferage.
Before commenting on the second issue surrounding privacy, it is important to understand what Aadhaar stands for. Aadhaar is a 12-digit ID which is unique to any individual in the country (It is 16 digits, but only 12 digits are relevant for identification). Behind Aadhaar is biometric data, that uniquely identifies an individual. As of now, biometric data includes digital data of the face, all ten fingerprints and iris scan. Aadhaar also includes other general details like name, age, sex etc.
(The author is a Bengaluru-based technology consultant)
As the implementation of Aadhaar, formally known as UID, gathers steam with the project entering the prototype implementation stage, we have started hearing dissenting voices questioning the need for such an intrusive ID, incurring a lot of public money. Questions are also being asked about the constitutionality of such an exercise. While it is easy to dismiss such objections as being alarmist, it is important to go into some of the issues being raised by the critics, especially in the context of the exaggerated claims of the proponents of Aadhaar.
The ideas around Aadhaar being not new, it is pertinent to review the status of similar schemes in other countries. In the USA, the Social Security Number, initially conceived as a number to track individuals in social security programs, has been in use for more than 50 years. A recent proposal by some US senators to introduce biometric Social Security cards has run into stiff opposition by privacy advocates and civil-society groups. The UK government had introduced a similar biometric national ID scheme some time back. The new government plans to scrap the biometric national ID scheme within 100 days, in addition to destroying all the biometric data that was collected. The exercise was deemed wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive.
In India, there have been various attempts for the creation of a national ID for a decade or more. However, the issue gathered momentum with the reinvention of the same in the form of UID, which has recently been rechristened as Aadhaar.
Aadhaar came into public consciousness after the UIDAI was established and the head of a corporate firm roped in as the chairman of the project. Thereafter, there were a series of seminars, analogous to marketing campaigns, advocating the positive benefits of Aadhaar. Some of the champions of UID, being influenced by notions in the IT world, looked at Aadhaar as a panacea for all ills surrounding public service delivery. The chairperson of UIDAI is reported to have even gone to the extent of saying that“The slogan of bijli, sadak, pani” is passé; 'virtual things' like UID number, bank account and mobile phone numbers are the in-thing.” This was almost to indicate the dawn of a new era with different priorities, making the earlier preoccupations irrelevant. Can anything be further from the truth than this?
One of the reasons for carrying this perception is that Aadhaar, though conceived at the government level, is currently championed by technocrats turned bureaucrats. These technocrats, who are significantly influenced by the products and processing in the IT world, want to replicate the same in the public sphere, often ignoring the complex realities of the real world. While the making of the biometric data and its management by itself has a significant technological content, its impact goes far beyond it as it covers the ordinary citizen and the wide social sector. Focusing too much on technology, the social and privacy issues were probably overlooked at the infancy. While the UIDAI tried to address some of these concerns later through seminars, they were not comprehensive enough to gather diverse public opinion. Even though the initial mandate of UIDAI was to focus on technology associated with biometric data, the casual utterances of key representatives, without adequate awareness of privacy issues, went beyond that to advocate the wider adoption of UID in both public and private spheres.
Two of the major issues concerning Aadhaar revolve around the benefits of having an identity and the risks of losing privacy. Proponents of the benefits are of the opinion that a lot of social welfare programmers intended for the poor do not reach them or are denied to them because of the issues surrounding identity. By fixing the issue of identity using Aadhaar, inefficiencies and irregularities surrounding the delivery and management of social services would be resolved.
This is a claim disputed by most of the social scientists/activists who feel that to be a gross over-simplification of the reasons for failures of social welfare schemes. For example, in most of the social welfare programmes where multiple agencies are involved, fixing individual identity does not necessarily stop corruption and pilferage.
Before commenting on the second issue surrounding privacy, it is important to understand what Aadhaar stands for. Aadhaar is a 12-digit ID which is unique to any individual in the country (It is 16 digits, but only 12 digits are relevant for identification). Behind Aadhaar is biometric data, that uniquely identifies an individual. As of now, biometric data includes digital data of the face, all ten fingerprints and iris scan. Aadhaar also includes other general details like name, age, sex etc.
(The author is a Bengaluru-based technology consultant)
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22nd June 2010
Aadhar and privacy- II by Ramdass Keshavamurthy
Aadhar and privacy- II by Ramdass Keshavamurthy
While the UIDAI can try to address the issues surrounding privacy concerning the storage and access of data by resorting to latest technologies, none of these that are currently available are foolproof. This is the second and concluding part of a two-part series
Most of the privacy debates around Aadhaar revolve around collection, storage and management of such vast amounts of private data concerning the citizens at one or more places and its usage. Never in the history of our country (probably for that matter in any country) has there been a situation wherein the entire private data of its citizens is stored and located at one place (Central ID Data Repository). While the UIDAI can try to address the issues surrounding privacy concerning the storage and access of data by resorting to latest technologies, none of these that are currently available are foolproof. There are sufficient incidents of hackers having broken into both public and private networks and sites. Given the vulnerability of such data to attacks, what is to done if an individual's biometric data is stolen? While data like the address or phone number can be easily be changed after being stolen, the biometric details of an individual can never be changed. Your fingerprint remains your fingerprint! The only option is to completely rebuild an alternative identity for the person whose data has been stolen, which would be practically impossible. On similar lines, doubts have been expressed about the robustness of the methods available for matching biometric information for identification which can result in false positives/negatives.
Aside from the direct issues related to technology is the issue of how the data is going to be used. While the private biometric data which is part of Aadhaar can be made secure to the extent technologically feasible, the same cannot be said about the derived uses of Aadhaar, by both private and public agencies. Though the enrollment to Aadhaar is currently optional, over time there would be an indirect compulsion to have one, as more and more services get tied into it. Casual use of Aadhaar for most of the transactions like bank, insurance etc., would indirectly facilitate linking of an individual's information, thus making profiling easy. Viewed in this context, the interest shown by some private agencies in using Aadhaar and its infrastructure as part of their process only confirms the suspicion of the critics. To propose a revenue model based on the usage of Aadhaar, as is being currently contemplated, would only broaden its usage, thus facilitating misuse.
Coming to the biometric data itself, some questions are being asked about the extent of the data collected and its possible misuse. Is it necessary to collect so much biometric data for identification purposes? Is it possible that such private data can be misused, given the fact that it is centralised? Consider a scenario in which a fingerprint is left behind by an individual at a location, which is fairly common, this could suddenly link him to an event he is not at all concerned with.
Unfortunately, a fingerprint does not have time signature to indicate when the impression was made! Given the scope for such misinterpretations, how appropriate is it to use fingerprints in biometric data? If identity is the sole issue, is it better to stick to some non-traceable markers like iris scan etc., which are less likely to be misused?
The last issue is concerned with the Aadhaar enrollment process itself. While enrolling people for Aadhaar, in addition to informing them about the benefits, are they being informed about the possible risks related to privacy and the need to be cautious in its use? A recent article in a leading national magazine has pointed out some grave misconceptions in people who have enrolled for the scheme in a village in Karnataka. Given such a possibility, one pertinent question that is being asked by activists is instead of putting poor/ignorant people through the process first, why not start with the rich and the urban population which can understand the issues better? Possibly one could start with an IT company itself! Enrolling people without adequately educating them about both the benefits and risks is akin to conducting clinical trials on patients with the promise of a possible cure without informing them about inherent risks.
In conclusion, given the diverse opinions on this issue, is there a middle ground possible, considering the fact there might a need for proper identity under some circumstances? Perhaps yes, if we can look at some via media alternatives. One way is to restrict the amount of biometric data collected and instead focus on the improvements in the process adopted for collection and verification of traditional data (as is done currently for many IDs). Another aspect is to find alternatives to centralised storage of the biometric data. One possible solution is to keep biometric data private on a card (along the lines being suggested in the US). The system would then authenticate only the genuineness of the card by connecting to a central server, whereas the biometric information is authenticated by reading from the card locally. This, though inconvenient when a card is lost, would significantly address some privacy concerns. These technological solutions should be followed by legislation restricting the use of Aadhaar for the barest minimum purposes in addition to prohibiting any illegitimate collection, storage and use. All this would require the openness of UIDAI to acknowledge and engage with various groups to try to find a common meeting ground, instead of being fixed on the approaches.
(The author is a Bengaluru-based technology consultant)
Most of the privacy debates around Aadhaar revolve around collection, storage and management of such vast amounts of private data concerning the citizens at one or more places and its usage. Never in the history of our country (probably for that matter in any country) has there been a situation wherein the entire private data of its citizens is stored and located at one place (Central ID Data Repository). While the UIDAI can try to address the issues surrounding privacy concerning the storage and access of data by resorting to latest technologies, none of these that are currently available are foolproof. There are sufficient incidents of hackers having broken into both public and private networks and sites. Given the vulnerability of such data to attacks, what is to done if an individual's biometric data is stolen? While data like the address or phone number can be easily be changed after being stolen, the biometric details of an individual can never be changed. Your fingerprint remains your fingerprint! The only option is to completely rebuild an alternative identity for the person whose data has been stolen, which would be practically impossible. On similar lines, doubts have been expressed about the robustness of the methods available for matching biometric information for identification which can result in false positives/negatives.
Aside from the direct issues related to technology is the issue of how the data is going to be used. While the private biometric data which is part of Aadhaar can be made secure to the extent technologically feasible, the same cannot be said about the derived uses of Aadhaar, by both private and public agencies. Though the enrollment to Aadhaar is currently optional, over time there would be an indirect compulsion to have one, as more and more services get tied into it. Casual use of Aadhaar for most of the transactions like bank, insurance etc., would indirectly facilitate linking of an individual's information, thus making profiling easy. Viewed in this context, the interest shown by some private agencies in using Aadhaar and its infrastructure as part of their process only confirms the suspicion of the critics. To propose a revenue model based on the usage of Aadhaar, as is being currently contemplated, would only broaden its usage, thus facilitating misuse.
Coming to the biometric data itself, some questions are being asked about the extent of the data collected and its possible misuse. Is it necessary to collect so much biometric data for identification purposes? Is it possible that such private data can be misused, given the fact that it is centralised? Consider a scenario in which a fingerprint is left behind by an individual at a location, which is fairly common, this could suddenly link him to an event he is not at all concerned with.
Unfortunately, a fingerprint does not have time signature to indicate when the impression was made! Given the scope for such misinterpretations, how appropriate is it to use fingerprints in biometric data? If identity is the sole issue, is it better to stick to some non-traceable markers like iris scan etc., which are less likely to be misused?
The last issue is concerned with the Aadhaar enrollment process itself. While enrolling people for Aadhaar, in addition to informing them about the benefits, are they being informed about the possible risks related to privacy and the need to be cautious in its use? A recent article in a leading national magazine has pointed out some grave misconceptions in people who have enrolled for the scheme in a village in Karnataka. Given such a possibility, one pertinent question that is being asked by activists is instead of putting poor/ignorant people through the process first, why not start with the rich and the urban population which can understand the issues better? Possibly one could start with an IT company itself! Enrolling people without adequately educating them about both the benefits and risks is akin to conducting clinical trials on patients with the promise of a possible cure without informing them about inherent risks.
In conclusion, given the diverse opinions on this issue, is there a middle ground possible, considering the fact there might a need for proper identity under some circumstances? Perhaps yes, if we can look at some via media alternatives. One way is to restrict the amount of biometric data collected and instead focus on the improvements in the process adopted for collection and verification of traditional data (as is done currently for many IDs). Another aspect is to find alternatives to centralised storage of the biometric data. One possible solution is to keep biometric data private on a card (along the lines being suggested in the US). The system would then authenticate only the genuineness of the card by connecting to a central server, whereas the biometric information is authenticated by reading from the card locally. This, though inconvenient when a card is lost, would significantly address some privacy concerns. These technological solutions should be followed by legislation restricting the use of Aadhaar for the barest minimum purposes in addition to prohibiting any illegitimate collection, storage and use. All this would require the openness of UIDAI to acknowledge and engage with various groups to try to find a common meeting ground, instead of being fixed on the approaches.
(The author is a Bengaluru-based technology consultant)
