India’s new National Biometric System raises civil liberties & privacy concerns

A new scheme is being introduced in India which implements a biometric database of personal identities for the country's 1.2 billon residents - the world's largest such scheme. The target of the scheme is to help India cope with the recent expansion of its social welfare provision, the fastest in the country's history. Since the scheme's inception in 2010, close to 200 million people have been enrolled.

Under the voluntary scheme which is operated by a number of agents under a public-private partnership, a Unique Identification number (UID) is issued to individuals. This number is be linked with three key pieces of information; fingerprints (all ten), iris scans and a picture of the face. The system may even be in time, extended to bank accounts or indeed addresses to avail of social services. The system attempts to alleviate fraud and corruption of India's social welfare system and other government assistance for the poor. There are other uses of the scheme too - a Jaipur-based NGO, Operation Asha has also used the scheme to monitor and attempt to eradicate tuberculosis in the city, and has received a grant from The World Bank to continue its work.

Despite the advantages that the system presents (universally accessible licences from each state, UID identification of refugees and migrant workers), concerns have been raised about the civil liberties, privacy law and surveillance issues that this type of system poses.

NGOs have called for the expansion of UID to be halted, saying that the government's decision to allow it to flourish was without any legal and constitutional mandate. The Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, Sunil Abraham, said that the project had been allowed to "march on" without any data protection or privacy laws in place. He said: "On one hand, the government wants its citizens to be transparent by giving all their biometric and demographic data, but on the other hand, people in higher authorities are making every bid to conceal facts and function in a non-transparent manner".

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