Aadhaar - a glimpse into our near future

Beneath is a New York Times article describing India's rollout of its national biometric ID scheme in which its 1.3 billion citizens must have their fingerprints, faces and eyes (irises) scanned. It's mandatory by stealth for everyone to submit to their government's will because those who don't are denied benefits, cannot hold jobs, have bank accounts, etc, etc.

‘Big Brother’ in India Requires Fingerprint Scans for Food, Phones and Finances

India has collected biometric data on most of its 1.3 billion residents, to be used in a nationwide identity system called Aadhaar, meaning “foundation.”

By VINDU GOELAPRIL 7, 2018

NEW DELHI — Seeking to build an identification system of unprecedented scope, India is scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents and connecting the data to everything from welfare benefits to mobile phones.

Civil libertarians are horrified, viewing the program, called Aadhaar, as Orwell’s Big Brother brought to life. To the government, it’s more like “big brother,” a term of endearment used by many Indians to address a stranger when asking for help.

For other countries, the technology could provide a model for how to track their residents. And for India’s top court, the ID system presents unique legal issues that will define what the constitutional right to privacy means in the digital age.

To Adita Jha, Aadhaar was simply a hassle. The 30-year-old environmental consultant in Delhi waited in line three times to sit in front of a computer that photographed her face, captured her fingerprints and snapped images of her irises. Three times, the data failed to upload. The fourth attempt finally worked, and she has now been added to the 1.1 billion Indians already included in the program.

Ms. Jha had little choice but to keep at it. The government has made registration mandatory for hundreds of public services and many private ones, from taking school exams to opening bank accounts.

“You almost feel like life is going to stop without an Aadhaar,” Ms. Jha said.

Technology has given governments around the world new tools to monitor their citizens. In China, the government is rolling out ways to use facial recognition and big data to track people, aiming to inject itself further into everyday life. Many countries, including Britain, deploy closed-circuit cameras to monitor their populations.

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But India’s program is in a league of its own, both in the mass collection of biometric data and in the attempt to link it to everything — traffic tickets, bank accounts, pensions, even meals for undernourished schoolchildren.

“No one has approached that scale and that ambition,” said Jacqueline Bhabha, a professor and research director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, who has studied biometric ID systems around the world. “It has been hailed, and justifiably so, as an extraordinary triumph to get everyone registered.”

Critics fear that the government will gain unprecedented insight into the lives of all Indians.

In response, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other champions of the program say that Aadhaar is India’s ticket to the future, a universal, easy-to-use ID that will reduce this country’s endemic corruption and help bring even the most illiterate into the digital age.

“It’s the equivalent of building interstate highways,” said Nandan Nilekani, the technology billionaire who was tapped by the government in 2009 to build the Aadhaar system. “If the government invested in building a digital public utility and that is made available as a platform, then you actually can create major innovations around that.”

The potential uses — from surveillance to managing government benefit programs — have drawn interest elsewhere. Sri Lanka is planning a similar system, and Britain, Russia and the Philippines are studying it, according to the Indian government.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/t...d-aadhaar.html

There are many sad eyed animals in your neck of the woods with strange human-like offspring. A quick glance at your photocard would have them racing for the hills and your game would be up. I'm not surprised you want to remain anonymous. By the way, do you really think anyone in India gets welfare benefits. The nearest they get to a welfare benefit is not having their children gang raped by the local police and politicians. But judging from the latest news that benefit does not extend to the lower castes.

You have a nerve attacking my character. A Teddy Boy in the 50s, you became a greasy Rocker in the 60s putting the boot into scooter owners before graduating to the back of Chelsea's Shed a decade later where you directed operations against rival supporters.

As for India's beta testing for the Zionazis, it's a stepping stone to their ultimate goal of a cashless world.

How would it reduce this country’s endemic corruption?

It won't. It's a pretext and the set-up for them to eliminate cash, and that measure would reduce corruption and tax evasion as every monetary transaction would be visible to and trackable by the state.

Glad I'm closer to death than birth :biggrin: The world is going to be a unenviable place for those who live in the future. Even now I am surrounded by people who have no concept of a pre-digital world.

It must be exhausting assuming that every technological and cultural advance is part of a wider plan for some shadowy organisation to get you.