Is UIDAI’s Aadhaar, the same thing that it claims to be? Here is a simple analysis of the UID project from Dr Anupam Saraph, who designed and implemented identity schemes for government and private organisations
"In the meanwhile, no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory and when any person applies to get the Aadhaar Card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant."
-Supreme Court Order in WP 494 of 2012 on September 23rd 2013
How safe is the UID?
1. Enrolment agencies, sub-registrars, registrars and UIDAI have no legal liability for any theft, fraud, crime, and compromise of your security or privacy that may be perpetuated through Aadhaar
2. The use of Aadhaar by various agencies will now expose all your IDs, information, properties, entitlements etc. to misuse in one go thus exposing you to unprecedented risk
3. You have neither control on who uses your Aadhaar nor any way to know or verify its use by anyone
4. Your entire data and biometric is handled by non-Indian companies
How safe is your money in the banking system with UID?
1. Banks have been directed to open accounts with Aadhaar numbers instantaneously—they can no longer verify if the number links to real and unique individuals
2. Money transfers from Aadhaar accounts will not be audited if there is less than Rs10 lakh transferred in a year. This means subsidy, bribes and black money may go to shell accounts that may never be traced!
3. Money can be moved from Aadhaar-to-Aadhaar electronically without your knowledge
How protected are your entitlements and rights with UID?
1. Aadhaar does not guarantee anything. It merely becomes yet another obstacle in obtaining services from the government
2. If your biometric verification fails, you will lose all benefits across the government till you re-establish your credentials. Re-establishing credentials may be at the mercy of netas and babus
How legal is the UID?
1. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Aadhaar card has rejected the Aadhaar exercise. There is no legal sanction or budgetary sanction
2. The Planning Commission has no mandate for such projects
3. The Executive order is bad law under the constitution as it violates fundamental right
4. Under the Citizenship Rules of 2003 it is the Registrar General of India who has to maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue National ID cards
Some fallacious UID Premises
1. Each UID number corresponds to a unique real person
2. Each person can have only one UID
3. All issued UID numbers are genuine
4. No identity theft is possible with the UID
5. Existing identity databases are full of fraud and duplication
6. UID database made by the same agencies/documents has no fraud or duplication
7. Identity is the barrier to service
8. Cash transfer is more effective than the service it was meant to subsidize or deliver
9. Cash transfers will reach real beneficiary
10. Several trillion Rupees can be transferred directly without any scam
11. Financial inclusion is about having a bank account
12. 18,950 rural branches can service 593,731 villages or 31 villages to a branch or 40,000 persons per rural branch through UID
13. 38,592 branches can service 5,161 cities and towns or 7,500 persons per urban branch through UID
14. Corruption in India is because the common man fakes identity
15. UID will simplify the processes to access fundamental rights, entitlements and services
Additional References
2. http://planningcommission.nic.in/sectors/index.php?sectors=dbt
3. http://bargad.org/2012/03/17/budgetary-allocation-for-uid/
4. http://openspace.org.in/UIDaadhaar
5. http://www.aadhararticles.blogspot.in
6. http://saynotoaadhaar.blogspot.in
7. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewMasterCirculardetails.aspx
8. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_CircularIndexDisplay.aspx
9. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx
10. http://identityproject.lse.ac.uk
11. http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/5-problems-national-id-cards
(Dr Anupam Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands. Dr Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and served as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas.)
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udyog aadhar
It is difficult for a 'poor' person to shell out Rs. 1000/- at one go for a cylinder and then wait (indefinitely?) for the subsidy to be credited to his or her account. The problem becomes acute if the cylinder comes at the end of the month because most are living a hand-to-mouth existence.
This is a very valid point, which has not been brought out so far.
Problem with cash/cheque subsidies given currently is, unless you give some "babu" a cut of it, he will make sure you won't get it.
For subsidies like LPG, people buying it at subsidised rates and selling in black or using it for commercial purposes are the problems.
These things can be drastically improved if Govt transfers various subsidies directly to the recipient.
True, there can be loopholes in this, but it is still far better than the current systems.
At any point of time non-matching bimetries outnumber matching ones by orders of magnitudes.
In other words, while biometry may not be enough to prove 2 persons identical, on great many occasions it proves two persons to be non identical.
Let us leave the uniqueness debate to theoreticians. I like to look at UID as an extension of the PAN notion. True, there could be implementation issues, which does not make the basic idea flawed.
Anyway, now that the SC has ruled that Aadhar is not mandatory to avail of govt welfare services, it's better NOT TO enrol for it, until things become more transparent. I believe this entire Aadhar project is someday going to be exposed in a mega-scam, much larter than the 2G spectrum one.
http://www.toxicswatch.org/2013/09/uid-i...
Anyway...
Does Professor John Daugman, for example, agree with UIDAI when they say that “… although [the false positive identification rate of 0.057%] is expected to grow as the database size increases, it is not expected to exceed manageable values even at full enrolment of 120 crores”? It seems unlikely—Professor Daugman is the man who first pointed out that any attempt to prove uniqueness in a large population of biometrics must drown in a sea of false positives, please see
And does Professor Jim Wayman, for example, agree with UIDAI when they say that “… based on the [receiver operating characteristic] model, the UIDAI expects the accuracy of the system to remain within the same order of magnitude as reported above. Hence it can be stated that system will be able to scale to handle the entire population without significant drop in accuracy”? It seems unlikely—Professor Wayman is the lead author of a paper which concludes that biometrics is a discipline out of statistical control, the results gathered so far tell you nothing about what to expect in future, please see
http://biometrics.nist.gov/cs_links/ibpc...
Final.pdf
And
Three scholars who have provided the academic foundation for the biometrics industry, particularly in the Western world, say that the level of uncertainty in biometrics is so great that tests prove nothing.
The academicians have, in a paper titled "Fundamental issues in biometric performance testing: A modern statistical and philosophical framework for uncertainty assessment", argued that the level of uncertainty in biometrics is so great that they cannot be used to predict how well the technology will perform in the real world and therefore this cannot support a valid argument for investment in biometrics.
The academicians are James L Wayman from San José State University, Antonio Possolo, head of the statistical engineering division at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Anthony J Mansfield from UK National Physical Laboratory, all recognised as stalwarts of the biometrics industry.
However, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which has embarked on a tagging programme that is based on biometrics, is silent on the report. The institution has, till now, been quick to associate with other academic groups.
While UIDAI claims that biometrics will allow it to deliver a unique identification, it has goofed up its own test results while pushing its ambitious Aadhaar project. (Read, 'How UIDAI goofed up pilot test results to press forward with UID scheme'.) For more READ (if you can, I mean) http://www.moneylife.in/article/world-re...
Just two simple questions.
1. How many contractors, sub-contractors collect and share American embassy data?
2. Are you willing to take responsibility for the data loss/theft of any individual? (FYI...UIDAI is not ready, so pls pls pls take the responsibility)
Not an exact anology, but imagine life without PAN today... PAN is a good example of how the IDs help.
Now Adhar is much more complex, expensive, uses biometry, has privacy and security issues etc. and arguably has a lot more other flaws.
These flaws should be brought up, debated and resolved.
If your articles debate the premise separately and the implementation flaws separately, they will be much more balanced.
Aadhaar number can ensure money in your bank account and that Aadhaar number is not secure and your bank account is opened on the basis of an insecure number and the RBI has said that Banks will not take any liability in case of fraud due to an insecure number. Will you feel comfortable especially when that number also has all your bio-metrics as well as your personal data? World-wide losses of identity cards can go up to 20 %. If you are dependent on one number for all your entitlements including registering of property documents and even your marriage, imagine the havoc it will create!
And isn't your privacy compromised?
We have written to the Cabinet Secretary giving an exhaustive analysis in July 2013. We haven't had even an acknowledgement. We shall now use the RTI Act to get government's point of view.
But wouldn't it be prudent if you do a couple of more things:
1. Explain "fallacious UID Premises". Why do you think them to be so.
2. Conduct an interview with Nandan Nilekani and let the nation hear his views on above points.
If you are one-to-one with Nilekani, please advise him to talk to us. He was invited for a panel discussion at Pune. He refused.
But wouldn't it be prudent if you do a couple of more things:
1. Explain "fallacious UID Premises". Why do you think them to be so.
2. Conduct an interview with Nandan Nilekani and let the nation hear his views on above points.