A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns

India’s legislators are on Wednesday debating a law that would allow the government to collect biometric and demographic information from people in return for distributing to them government benefits and subsidies.

A number of legislators and civil rights activists are concerned about the absence of strong privacy safeguards in the legislation and a provision in the law that allows the government to access the data collected for national security reasons. There is also concern that such a large centralized database of personal information could be hacked and critical information leaked.

Biometric information, once leaked cannot be ‘revoked,’ and identity fraud may in fact become harder to detect if Aadhaar is used for authentication of transactions, said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, in an email.

Activists are also wary that the program could be extended by the government to make it a mandatory digital ID card for people in the country. Already some telecommunications services and financial services companies use the biometric identity as an optional way for verifying customers. Currently, people can keep their personal information in silos, as for example their insurance company can’t combine their database with that of a hospital, Prakash said. “However, with Aadhaar as a unique linking factor, they could, even without the person’s consent,” he added.

The biometric ID, which assigns a person a 12-digit number called the Aadhaar number, requires the collection of photos, fingerprints, iris scans and other information such as the name, date of birth and address of the individual. Every time a person has to be verified, he has to present the Aadhaar number, and his biometric information has to match the data stored in a centralized repository.

The digital identity is expected to provide proof of identification to the large number of poor Indians who do not have house addresses, school certificates, birth certificates or other documents that are usually used to prove identity in India.

The traditional paper ration books used in the country are notoriously stuffed with people who are nonexistent or who do not typically qualify for benefits, so the government hopes to save some money by linking the benefits to a digital identity. But the new scheme addresses only end-user fraud and not the large-scale theft prevalent in the entire supply chain, according to analysts.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a member of India’s Parliament, has proposed amendments to the bill that would ensure that Aadhaar numbers should not be used as proof of identity for purposes other than subsidies and benefits. Chandrasekhar also wants the Unique Identification Authority of India that manages the project to be responsible for ensuring the security and privacy of the biometric and demographic information of the account holder, with liability for damages in a civil court in the case of a breach.

The Aadhaar program has been allotting IDs for a number of years, even under a previous government, but the program was the offshoot of an executive order and had no legal sanction. The country’s Supreme Court ruled in 2013 in an interim order that people cannot be required to have Aadhaar identification to collect state subsidies. Aware of the legal minefield it was treading on, the government had said the scheme was voluntary.

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 passed recently in the Lok Sabha, one of the houses of India’s parliament, now aims to make the scheme mandatory. The bill sailed through the Lok Sabha where the government has a majority, but will likely meet with strong opposition from the other house, the Rajya Sabha. But the government has classified the bill as a money bill and the Rajya Sabha does not have the final say on such bills. So the legislation is likely to be passed in any case despite its limitations.