Nilekani’s Aadhaar a danger to our privacy
Sandhya Jain March 13, 2014
Nandan Nilekani, who got the Congress ticket for the Bangalore South Lok Sabhaconstituency even before officially joining the party on March 9, continues to hold the post of Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), or Aadhaar. The project has been dogged by controversy since its inception in 2009 because of the cavalier fashion in which sensitive biometric data of citizens was collected by executive order, without Parliamentary mandate, and held by a private body with questionable links and shifting goals.
Now, in an interview to a television channel, Nandan Nilekani has revealed that the end goal of Aadhaar is very different from what was stated when it was being imposed upon the country by the UPA fiat. A leading economic daily has expressed concerns, first raised by a reader, that his election office may be using the data of his fully covered constituency to reach voters. While the Election Commission gives political parties copies of the list of registered voters in each constituency, the Infosys co-founders’ campaign office has been sending personalised letters to the heads of every household. The letter cover looks very much like the ones used to send the Aadhaar number cards to individuals and bears the name of the addressee and that of his/her father on it. Since Aadhaar has been executed with public funds, this may be akin to misuse of the Government symbols like the Ashok Chakra; the Election Commission should take a view on it.
The technocrat with a personal worth of $1.3 billion expressed gratitude to the Gandhi family for backing Aadhaar to the hilt, as a consequence of which 60 crore people have been enrolled despite lack of Parliamentary sanction to it. In a television interview, he claimed that it was “irreversible now”, possibly because so much public money has been spent. His interviewer did not ask the relevance of the project even after the Supreme Court declared it ‘non-mandatory’ and ordered delinking Aadhaar from the Government benefits and subsidies – making the project effectively a white elephant – but Nilekani confidently asserted that Aadhaar is the best “anti-corruption platform” and its end goal is a “cashless society”. This should ring warning bells in responsible quarters.
Interestingly, the ‘unique identity’ can be manufactured by anyone with some equipment. On March 10, 2014, the Mumbai police busted a fake Aadhaar card and voter identity card racket in Byculla, which they believe is part of a much larger racket in creation of fake identities. Three persons were arrested for forgery of official records and their equipment including iris and fingerprint scanners were seized. Among the fake election cards seized, at least three had different names but a similar number (ZHS 4001377).
Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar had warned that Aadhaar is a colossal misuse of public funds. The very claim that Aadhaar gives an identity to all citizens is false, as the programme merely takes an existing ID (real or fake) of anybody (citizen, foreigner or illegal immigrant) and issues a number. Since there is no identity verification, there is no identity being issued. All that happens is that the fake or true ID information is linked to that ID holder’s iris or biometric information. Thus, there is no way to assess the number of fake entries in the Aadhaar database, and as the Mumbai police arrests show, both the fake voter ID and fake UID can be manufactured en masse without entering a Government office.
The issue of fraud in Aadhaar scheme can no longer be ducked. As the Mumbai arrests show, Aadhaar is a national security risk, and is being issued to non-citizens, illegal immigrants, and most likely even to terrorists in cities like Mumbai. Hence, the critical issue of citizenship must first be settled and the UPA diktat of forcing it on the citizenry for non-subsidy schemes like registration of property and opening of bank accounts must be discouraged forthwith. The Supreme Court has already directed (September 23, 2013) that the Aadhaar card cannot be given to illegal immigrants. The controversy over LPG cylinder subsidy has also proved that Aadhaar cannot prevent leakages or reach intended targets because it is fundamentally flawed.
The most serious concern regarding Aadhaar, which the Government of India admitted in the Supreme Court, is that the citizens’ biometric data is not secure, which is one reason why no European country has implemented such a scheme. In case of Aadhaar, the data is held by private operators, and hence is prone to dangerous misuse. One of the firms engaged in the project is the New York-based MongoDB, which is backed by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It has access to the complete database. Former National Security Agency (NSA) employee turned whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has revealed that the US intelligence agencies routinely intercept communications in Europe and Asia, including India. This, as the Centre for Internet and Society has pointed out, means that secret courts and court orders can be used by the CIA to gain access to the UID data.
Aadhaar is an online database, which makes it vulnerable anyway. James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald have reported (The Guardian) that Edward Snowden’s leaked files show that the US NSA and its UK counterpart Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) have largely compromised the guarantees Internet companies give to consumers that their communications, online banking and medical records will be indecipherable to criminals or the Governments. Since then, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs has accused telecom operator Vodafone of secretly sharing subscriber data with the British GHCQ by giving secret unlimited access to its network of undersea cables, which carry much of the world’s phone calls and Internet traffic. Vodafone has denied the charges.
The UID is dangerous and needs to be urgently dismantled to protect Indian citizens. Any database of citizens must be secure and offline, at the very least. As a beginning, the move to force banks to move to biometric ATMs must be thwarted without further ado, as it will increase the risk of the theft of biometric data of citizens which can by misused in various ways. It will also sharply escalate banking costs as the burden is passed on to consumers. The UID is part of the globalisation project of the World Bank, NATO and WTO, which will be used to intrusively micro-monitor citizens’ employment history, health profile, rental and credit card history, bank accounts and savings – the frightening scenario of mind-crushing control foreseen by George Orwell, who linked the totalitarian State to the western capitalist State.
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