[Itpolicy-np] Creepy Biometric IDs to Be Forced Onto India's 1.2 Billion Inhabitants

[Bipin Gautam]

http://www.alternet.org/world/148097/creepy_biometric_ids_to_be_forced_onto_india%27s_1.2_billion_inhabitants

In September, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of
India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and
cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages
of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project
whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID)
...
Other speakers raised issues of security and the possibility of
hackers getting at databases and passing on information to commercial
outfits, intelligence agencies or even criminal gangs.

In talks and television interviews, Nilekani has maintained that the
benefits of the UID project far outweigh its risks. "It's worth taking
on the project and trying to mitigate the risks so that we get the
outcomes we want," he told the CNN-IBN television channel in an
interview.
...
At the Aug. 25 meeting, Ramanthan said that while enrolling with the
UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might
require a UID number in order to transact business. Indeed, the UIDAI
has already signed agreements with banks, state governments and
hospital chains which will allow them to ask customers for UIDs.

Ramanathan said that, taken to its logical limit, the UID project will
make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to
undertake a simple task such as traveling within the country without a
UID number.
...

He added that NATGRID will "identify those who must be watched,
investigated, disabled and neutralized."


"Internationally only a few countries have provided national ID cards
because of the unsettled debate on privacy and civil liberties,"
...