Centre for Internet and Society

Aayush Rathi

praskrishna — 2019-09-22T15:17:01Z

Aayush Rathi

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Aayush.jpg

Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight

praskrishna — 2013-01-17T05:18:22Z

On Saturday, January 19, 2013, HasGeek and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are organizing a hacknight to understand Aaron’s work and contribute to his projects. The event starts from 2.00 p.m. onwards and ends at 8.00 a.m., the next day morning.

Among the hackers present will be some of Aaron's collaborators, such as Anand Chitipothu and A S L Devi.The Aaron Swartz memorial hacknight is a free event. You do not have to be a hacker to contribute and do not have to be present for the entire night. Join us even if just to show solidarity or inspire others on what they can do. HasGeek encourages participants to bring their own energy drinks and snacks for the evening so that there is enough to go around.

To register, visit: http://hacknight.in/hasgeek/aaronsw-memorial. Once your registration is approved, you can add or join a project to work on during the hacknight.

Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was a hacktivist. He helped create RSS 1.0; contributed to Creative Commons; was an early builder of Reddit, where he's often acknowledged as a co-founder; created the web.py framework; and more recently, became a data liberator, first with PACER, the US public case law archive, and then with scholarly articles from JSTOR, both of which got him into trouble with the law. Aaron's Demand Progress project helped stop SOPA and PIPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act in the US, both of which threatened to have far reaching unintended consequences.

Aaron Swartz took his life on Jan 11, 2013. However, his work on making the world a better place should not die with him. On Saturday, January 19, HasGeek and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are organizing a hacknight to understand Aaron’s work and contribute to his projects. Among the hackers present will be some of Aaron's collaborators, such as Anand Chitipothu and A S L Devi, who can help you get started.

About HasGeek

HasGeek creates discussion spaces around emerging technologies to foster the growth of communities. Since 2010, HasGeek has organized a number of conferences, hacknights and geekups around open source, web design and development, big data, cloud computing and mobile opportunities. The HasGeek Job Board connects thousands of individuals every month with jobs around upcoming technologies. HasGeek also builds tools to assist communities with organizing events and meetups. For more information, write to info@hasgeek.com

About CIS

CIS is a research and advocacy organization based in Bangalore. Founded in 2008, the Centre critically engages with issues concerning internet governance, freedom of speech, public accountability and digital pluralism. Through multidisciplinary research, intervention, and collaboration, CIS seeks to explore, understand, and affect the shape and form of the internet, and its relationship with the political, cultural, and social milieu of our times.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/aaron-swartz-memorial-hacknight

Aakriti

praskrishna — 2012-02-15T10:50:56Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/aakriti.jpg

Aadhaar’s moment of truth

praskrishna — 2011-07-05T07:16:58Z

It’s time for the unique identity project to answer tough questions it has dodged so far, writes MA Arun in the Deccan Herald.

On June 25, 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh generated one of the biggest feel-good headlines of UPA2. He appointed former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani as Chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which had been set up to assign a unique number to every resident of the country.

UIDAI – billed as the world’s largest e-governance project – presented a numbing technical challenge. Fingerprint and iris samples of one billion plus Indian residents had to be collected along with details of name, gender, birth date and address. A unique identity had to be assigned to each resident in return and then authenticate it online whenever called for.

Nilekani using his stature in the IT industry assembled a smart team of engineers, who could take the challenge head on. He also started tirelessly crisscrossing the country promoting the project and tying up with different government agencies and PSUs.

He addressed countless gatherings conveying a simple message: Indian growth has bypassed the poor and giving them legal identity was the first step in acknowledging their existence and making government services accessible.

In the last two years, there has been a little change in his script and in the response of the audience, which has by and large remained breathless and adulatory. There have been a few jarring notes. Once in a while he is accosted by individuals and organisations, who say the project takes away their privacy.

Most memorably, on January 7, 2011, Nilekani faced an uncharacteristically unruly audience at IISc, Bangalore, which demanded strong protection to privacy. People who attended the meeting found Nilekani evasive as protesting students waved placards outside the venue, urging him to go back.

But for the media, this reporter included, the dissenting opinion from possibly fringe protesters, sounded exaggerated, making too much of a small issue, debating an academic issue of little practical value.

Perhaps reflecting the larger prevailing sentiments on Aadhaar, Sujeet Pillai of Feecounter, says with the rise of social networking, privacy has already eroded. "We put more information on Facebook and Twitter than we share with Aadhaar. The benefits of the project outweigh the cost," he adds.

Many say it is only the middleclass which worries about privacy, while the poor would be more concerned about the benefits. Trying to address privacy concerns, Aadhaar officials have maintained they collect just basic details, enrollment is voluntary and information is encrypted. Your approval is required to authenticate your identity and while revealing who you are, the system just gives a yes or no response, they say.

Over the last year Aadhaar has picked up steam and observers, who expected the bureaucracy to resist, given its anti-corruption overtone, are mildly surprised. Various government departments are embracing it in competition. Several central ministries, state governments, PSUs have begun to tie their programmes to the Aadhaar number.

Aadhaar officials say they are on course to enroll 600 million by 2014 and by October this year they expect to start enrolling one million numbers a day. The pilot projects at Mysore, Tumkur and Hyderabad have already enrolled 85 per cent of the population and the project is ramping up to other districts and states.

Early last month the Cabinet Committee on Security in a seemingly unrelated move gave partial approval for a Home ministry project, National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid). The development alarmed the privacy advocates to again raise a cry over Aadhaar. Among other things, Natgrid, being run by an ex-army man, Capt Raghu Raman, reportedly seeks to integrate 21 databases - railways, airlines, stock exchanges, income tax, bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records, telecom service providers and chemical vendors.

Most of us reading this article appear in many these databases, which today are islands of information controlled by different government agencies. They cover different segments of the population and may overlap to some extent. Stitching together these disparate databases together would require a mammoth exercise to uniquely identify all Indian residents. That is precisely what Aadhaar, the missing link, is doing, say critics.

"If Aadhaar ever succeeds in assigning a unique number to all residents, it will take a maximum of two years to create a common Natgrid database. Using a terminal in his office, a cop would be able to watch whatever you do - travelling, talking, buying - in real time. The surveillance technology is pretty straightforward," says noted security expert and IIT Mumbai alumni, Dr Samir Kelekar of Teknotrends.

The system is being designed to catch terrorists and criminals, say Natgrid supporters. "But why subject the entire population to potentially the same level of surveillance," asks Sunil Abraham of Centre for Internet and Society.

Noted jurist Usha Ramanathan says since 2008 several measures such as the Collection of Statistics Act, The Information Technology Act, Aadhaar, National Grid have come about to collect information about people. “After 9/11 in the guise of homeland security USA expanded police powers. Something similar is happening in India after 26/11,” she says.

The claims of Aadhaar benefiting the poor is untested as there has been no feasibility study, she adds. "This is a security project masquerading as an anti-poverty project," says Abraham.

Aadhaar has eluded a debate so far on these issues, say critics. Ramanathan says she made three attempts in November 2009, July 2010 and February 2011 to engage Nilekani, Aadhaar Director General R S Sharma and few other project officials on the issue.

Dubious demands

A New Delhi-based Aadhaar government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there was no discussion within the project on the potential risks it posed. "The main focus is in making a paradigm shift in governance and reaching out to the poor to ensure that the Rs 3,26,000 crore being spent on subsidy is not pilfered," he said.

But he went on to acknowledge that Aadhaar was like 'nuclear energy', which could be used to either make bombs or generate electricity. “It is for the media and civil society to apply pressure for the right safeguards," he said.

While the engineers and bureaucrats are steamrolling the project, the laws of the land and the promised safeguards are yet to catch up with it.

Indian judiciary has also given a free hand to the law enforcement authorities to conduct surveillance. According to the latest Google Transparency Report, Indian government officials made 67 requests to remove contentious items from various Google services between July to December 2010. Only 6 requests were backed by court orders and rest were demands made by police and other executive agencies.

Why is Nilekani who has emerged as the face of Aadhaar silent about the security dimension of the project, ask critics. After all, the Infosys credo is to ‘disclose when in doubt’, they point out. "Nilekani and team are good people without any evil intention. They have never lived in villages and believe that technology can solve any problem," says Abraham.

Ramanathan differs. "In 2009, I would have said he was unaware of the possible risks of Aadhaar. I will not attribute that innocence to him anymore. People in power tend to be blinded by it," she says.

"Their response has varied from ‘nobody else is asking these questions’, ‘have not come prepared to address these issues today’ and ‘we will get back to you’," she says.

Critics also accuse Aadhaar officials of presenting a misleading picture. Enrollment started as a voluntary exercise, but is now being made mandatory to get LPG cylinders. "They were supposed to collect only basic details, but Aadhaar enrollment forms now ask for email ids and phone numbers," Ramanathan said.

This news appeared in the Deccan Herald on 5 July 2011. The original post can be read here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/aadhaar-truth

Aadhaar: Ushering in a Commercialized Era of Surveillance in India

praskrishna — 2017-06-07T12:45:30Z

Since last year, Indian citizens have been required to submit their photograph, iris and fingerprint scans in order to access legal entitlements, benefits, compensation, scholarships, and even nutrition programs. Submitting biometric information is needed for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers, the training and aid of disabled people, and anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS patients. Soon police in the Alwar district of Rajasthan will be able to register criminals, and track missing persons through an app that integrates biometric information with the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS).

The article by Jyoti Panday was published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on June 1, 2017.

These instances demonstrate how intrusive India’s controversial national biometric identity scheme, better known as Aadhaar has grown. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number (UID) issued by the government after verifying a person’s biometric and demographic information. As of April 2017, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has issued 1.14 billion UIDs covering nearly 87% of the population making Aadhaar, the largest biometric database in the world. The government asserts that enrollment reduces fraud in welfare schemes and brings greater social inclusion. Welfare schemes that provide access to basic services for marginalized and vulnerable groups are essential. However, unlike countries where similar schemes have been implemented, invasive biometric collection is being imposed as a condition for basic entitlements in India. The privacy and surveillance risks associated with the scheme have caused much dissension in India.

Identity and Privacy in India

Initiated as an identity authentication tool, the critical problem with Aadhaar is that it is being pushed as a unique identifier to access a range of services. The government continues to maintain that the scheme is voluntary, and yet it has galvanized enrollment by linking Aadhaar to over 50 schemes. Aadhaar has become the de-facto identity document accepted at private, banks, schools, and hospitals. Since Aadhaar is linked to the delivery of essential services, authentication errors or deactivation has serious consequences including exclusion and denial of statutory rights. But more importantly, using a unique identifier across a range of schemes and services enables seamless combination and comparison of databases. By using Aadhaar, the government can match existing records such as driving license, ration card, financial history to the primary identifier to create detailed profiles. Aadhaar may not be the only mechanism, but essentially, it's a surveillance tool that the Indian government can use to surreptitiously identify and track citizens.

This is worrying, particularly in context of the ambiguity regarding privacy in India. The right to privacy for Indian citizens is not enshrined in the Constitution. Although, the Supreme Court has located the right to privacy as implicit in the concept of “ordered liberty” and held that it is necessary in order for citizens to effectively enjoy all other fundamental rights. There is also no comprehensive national framework that regulates the collection and use of personal information. In 2012, Justice K.S. Puttaswamy challenged Aadhaar in the Supreme Court of India on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy. The Court passed an interim order restricting compulsory linking of Aadhaar for benefits delivery, and referred the clarification on privacy as a right to a larger bench. More than a year later, the constitutional bench is yet to be constituted.

The delay in sorting out the nature and scope of privacy as right in India has allowed the government to continue linking Aadhaar to as many schemes as possible, perhaps with the intention of ensuring the scheme becomes too big to be rolled back. In 2016, the government enacted the 'Aadhaar Act' passing the legislation without any debate, discussion or even approval of both houses of Parliament. In April this year, Aadhaar was made compulsory for filing income tax or PAN number application and the decision is being challenges in Supreme Court. Defending the State , the Attorney-General of India claimed that the arguments on so-called privacy and bodily intrusion is bogus, and citizens cannot have an absolute right over their body! The State’s articulation is chilling, especially in light of the Human DNA Profiling Bill seeking the right to collect biological samples and DNA indices of citizens. Such anti-rights arguments are worth note because biometric tracking of citizens isn't just government policy - it is also becoming big business.

Role of Private Companies

Private companies supply hardware, software, programs, and the biometric registration services for rolling out Aadhaar to India’s large population. UIDAI’s Committee on Biometrics acknowledges that biometrics data are national assets though American biometric technology provider L-1 Identity Solutions, and consulting firms Accenture and Ernst and Young can access and retain citizens' data. The Aadhaar Act introduces electronic Know-Your-Customer (eKYC) that allows government agencies and private companies to download data such as name, gender and date of birth from the Aadhaar database at the time of authentication. Banks and telecom companies using authentication process to download data and auto-fill KYC forms and to profile users. Over the last few years, the number of companies or applications built around profiling of citizens’ personally sensitive data has grown exponentially.

A number of people linked with creating the UIDAI infrastructure have founded iSPIRT, an organisation that is pushing for commercial uses of Aadhaar. Private companies are using Aadhaar for authentication purposes and background checks. Microsoft has announced SkypeLite integration with Aadhaar to verify users. Others, such as TrustId and Eko are integrating rating systems into their authentication services and tracking users through platforms they create. In essence such companies are creating their own private database to track authenticated Aadhaar users and they may sell this data to other companies. The growth of companies that share and combine databases to profile users is an indication of the value of personal data and its centrality for both large and small companies in India.

Integrating and linking large biometrics collections to each other, which are then linked with traditional data points that private companies hold such as geolocation or phone number enables constant surveillance to take over. So far, there has been no parliamentary discussion on the role of private companies. UIDAI remains the ultimate authority in deciding the nature, level and cost of access granted to private companies. For example, there is nothing in Aadhaar Act that prevents Facebook from entering into an agreement with the Indian government to make Aadhaar mandatory to access WhatsApp or any of its other services. Facebook could also pay data brokers and aggregators to create customer profiles to add to its ever growing data points for tracking and profiling its users.

Security Risks and Liability

A series of data leakages have raised concerns about which private entities are involved, and how they handle personal and sensitive data. In February, UIDAI registered a complaint against three companies for storing and using biometric data for multiple transactions. Aadhaar numbers of over 130 million people and bank account details of about 100 million people have been publicly displayed through government portals owing to poor security practices. A recent report from Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) showed that a simple tweaking of URL query parameters of the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) website could unmask and display private information of a fifth of India's population.

Such data leaks pose a huge risk as compromised biometrics can never be recovered. The Aadhaar Act establishes UIDAI as the primary custodian of identity information, but is silent on the liability in case of data breaches. The Act is also unclear about notice and remedies for victims of identity theft and financial frauds and citizens whose data has been compromised. UIDAI has continued to fix breaches upon being notified, but maintains that storage in federated databases ensures that no agency can track or profile individuals.

After almost a decade of pushing a framework for mass collection of data, the Indian government has issued guidelines to secure identity and sensitive personal data in India. The guidelines could have come earlier, and given large data leaks in the past may also be redundant. Nevertheless, it is reassuring to see practices for keeping information safe and the idea of positive informed consent being reinforced for government departments. To be clear, the guidelines are meant for government departments and private companies using Aadhaar for authentication, profiling and building databases fall outside its scope. With political attitudes to corporations exploiting personal information changing the world over, the stakes for establishing a framework that limits private companies commercializing personal data and tracking Indian citizens are as high as they have ever been.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/electronic-frontier-foundation-jyoti-panday-june-1-2017-aadhaar-ushering-in-a-commercialized-era-of-surveillance-in-india

Aadhaar: Govt will not compromise on national security

praskrishna — 2016-03-22T15:51:13Z

The government is confident that the Aadhaar Bill will be passed.

The article by Shreeja Sen was published by Livemint on March 9, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

In what could raise concerns of privacy activists questioning India’s unique identification project Aadhaar, the government on Tuesday said national security will not be compromised at all.

“We will not compromise on national security; certainly we will not compromise. The Supreme Court has already highlighted certain areas for consideration. We are going ahead taking into consideration all the suggestions of the Supreme Court,” law minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda said at a press conference, when asked how the Aadhaar bill tabled in Parliament last week will balance the protection of core biometrics and national security concerns.

Under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, there are measures to protect core biometric information like fingerprints and iris scans of the unique identification number holders.

However, Section 33 says for the purposes of national security, officials at the joint secretary level and above can access this information. The section has caused some worry to experts. In this analysis , policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society Pranesh Prakash says that the national security clause is worrisome. Adding to their concerns, the bill does not define what national security means.

The government is, however, confident that the bill will be passed. “Certainly it will be passed. The benefits that go from the exchequer to the beneficiaries will be taken care of by this bill,” Gowda said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-march-9-2016-shreeja-sen-aadhaar-govt-will-not-compromise-on-national-security

Aadhaar: Are a billion identities at risk on India's biometric database

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T06:38:26Z

"My fingerprints and iris are mine and my own. The state cannot take away my body," a lawyer told India's Supreme Court last week.

The article by Soutik Biswas was published by BBC News on May 4, 2017. Also see the blog post by Rawlson King published by Biometric Update.com on May 5, 2017.

Shyam Divan was arguing a crucial petition challenging a new law that makes it compulsory for people to submit a controversial biometric-based personal identification number while filing income tax returns.

Defending this law, the government's top law officer told the court on Tuesday that an individual's "right to body is not an absolute right".

"You can have right over your body but the state can restrict trading in body organs, so the state can exercise control over the body," Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said.

At the heart of the latest challenge are rising concerns over the security of this mega biometric database and privacy of the number holders. (The government says it needs to link the identity number to income tax returns to improve compliance and prevent fraud.)

India's biometric database is the world's largest. Over the past eight years, the government has collected fingerprints and iris scans from more than a billion residents - or nearly 90% of the population - and stored them in a high security data centre. In return, each person has been provided with a randomly generated, unique 12-digit identity number.

For a country of 1.2 billion people with only 65 million passport-holders and 200 million with driving licenses, the portable identity number is a boon to the millions who have long suffered for a lack of one.

States have been using the number, also called Aadhaar (Foundation), to transfer government pensions, scholarships, wages for a landmark rural jobs-for-work scheme and benefits for cooking fuel to targeted recipients, and distribute cheap food to the poor.

Over the years, the number has taken a life of its own and begun exerting, what many say, is an overweening and stifling control over people's lives. For many like political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Aadhaar has transmuted from a "tool of citizen empowerment to a tool of state surveillance and citizen vulnerability".

People will soon need the number to receive benefits from more than 500 of India's 1,200-odd welfare schemes. Even banks and private firms have begun using it to authenticate consumers: a new telecom company snapped up 100 million subscribers in quick time recently by verifying the customer's identity through the number.

'Forcibly linked'

People are using the number to even get their marriages registered. The number, says Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of Indian news site MediaNama, is "being forcibly linked to mobile numbers, bank accounts, tax filings, scholarships, pensions, rations, school admissions, health records and much much more, which thus puts more personal information at risk".

Some of the fears are not without basis.

The government has assured that the biometric data is "safe and secure in encrypted form", and anybody found guilty of leaking data can be jailed and fined.

But there have already been a number of leaks of details of students, pensioners and recipients of welfare benefits involving a dozen government websites. Even former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni's personal information was mistakenly tweeted by an overzealous enrolment service provider.

Now a disturbing report by The Centre for Internet and Society claims that details of around 130-135 million Aadhaar numbers, and around 100 million bank numbers of pensioners and rural jobs-for-work beneficiaries have been leaked online by four key government schemes.

More than 230 million people nationwide are accessing welfare benefits using their numbers, and potentially, according to the report, "we could be looking at a data leak closer to that number". And linking the number to different databases - as the government is doing - is increasing the risk of data theft and surveillance.

The chief law officer believes that the outrage over the leaks is "much ado about nothing".

"Biometrics were not leaked, only Aadhaar numbers were leaked. It is nothing substantial. The idea is biometrics should not be leaked," Mukul Rohtagi told the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The government itself has admitted that it has blacklisted or suspended some 34,000 service providers for helping create "fake" identification numbers or not following proper processes. Two years ago, a man was arrested for getting an identification number for his pet dog. The government itself has deactivated 8.5 million numbers for incorrect data, dodgy biometrics and duplication. Last month, crop loss compensation for more than 40,000 farmers was delayed because their Aadhaar numbers were "entered incorrectly by banks".

'Mass surveillance'

There are also concerns that the number can be used for profiling. Recently, authorities asked participants at a function in a restive university campus in southern India to provide their Aadhaar identity numbers. "This is not only a matter of privacy. The all pervasiveness of the Aadhaar number is a threat to freedom of expression, which is a constitutional right," Srinivas Kodali, who investigated the latest report on data leaks, told me.

Critics say the government is steaming ahead with making the number compulsory for a range of services, violating a Supreme Court order which said enrolment would be voluntary. "The main danger of the number," says economist Jean Dreze, "is that it opens the door to mass surveillance."

Nandan Nilekani, the technology tycoon who set up the programme popularly known by its acronym UIDAI, believes concerns about the safety of the biometric database are exaggerated.

He says the identity number has cut wastage, removed fakes, curbed corruption and made substantial savings for the government. He insists that the programme is completely encrypted and secure. "It's like you are creating a rule-based society," he told Financial Times recently, "it's the transition that is going on right now."

Abused

More than 60 countries around the world take biometric data from its people, says Mr Nilekani. But then there are nagging concerns worldwide about these databases being abused by hackers and state intelligence.

In 2016, personal details of some 50 million people in Turkey were reportedly leaked. (Turkey's population is estimated at 78 million.) In 2015, hackers stole more than five million fingerprints after breaching US government networks. In 2011, French experts discovered a hack involving the theft of millions of people's data in Israel.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta has written that the lack of a "clear transparent consent architecture, no transparent information architecture, no privacy architecture worth the name [India doesn't have a privacy law], and increasingly, no assurance about what exactly you do if the state decides to mess with your identity" could easily make Aadhaar a "tool of state suppression".

So a lot of lingering doubts remain. How pervasive should an identity number be? What about the individual freedom of citizens? How do you ensure the world's biggest biometric database is secure in a country with no privacy laws and a deficient criminal justice system?

In many ways, the debate about Aadhaar is also a debate about the future of India. As lawyer Shyam Divan argued forcefully in the top court, "people are reduced to vassals" when the state controls your body to this extent.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bbc-news-soutik-biswas-may-4-2017-aadhaar-are-a-billion-identities-at-risk-on-indias-biometric-database

Aadhaar: A widening net

praskrishna — 2017-04-22T05:06:23Z

As India makes Aadhaar compulsory for a range of services, concerns about potential data breaches remain more than six years after the govt started building the world’s largest biometric identification system.

The article by Komal Gupta, Apurva Vishwanath and Suranjana Roy was published in Livemint on April 21, 2017. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

On 29 March, a storm broke out on social media after private data that former Indian cricket captain M.S. Dhoni had furnished to get enrolled in India’s unique identity system, known as Aadhaar, were leaked online.

The popular cricketer’s wife, Sakshi, flagged the matter on Twitter, tagging information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. “Is there any privacy left? Information of Aadhaar card, including application, is made public property,” Sakshi fumed on the microblogging site.

The minister replied: “Sharing personal information is illegal. Serious action will be taken against this.”

It turned out to be the fault of an overenthusiastic common services centre in Dhoni’s home town of Ranchi licensed to enrol people in Aadhaar. The centre was promptly blacklisted. “We have ordered further inquiry on the matter and action will be taken against all those involved in the leak,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers Aadhaar.

The matter blew over soon enough, but it served to illustrate the lingering concerns about potential data breaches and privacy violations surrounding Aadhaar, which has become the world’s largest biometric identification database with 1.13 billion people enrolled in it in the past six years.

The project, under which a 12-digit identification number is to be allotted to every Indian resident, was originally supposed to be a way of plugging leakages in the delivery of state benefits such as subsidized grains to the poor.

It has now become mandatory for everything ranging from opening a bank account and getting a driver’s licence or a mobile phone connection to filing of income tax returns. Even government school students entitled to a free mid-day meal need an Aadhaar number.

The use of Aadhaar has only expanded with the government going on an overdrive to promote cashless transactions and payment systems linked to the biometric ID system after banning old, high-value bank notes in November in a crackdown on unaccounted wealth hidden away from the taxman.

For instance, the Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS) empowers a bank customer to use Aadhaar as her identity to access her Aadhaar-enabled bank account and perform basic banking transactions like cash deposit or withdrawal through a bank agent or business correspondent.

The customer can carry out transactions by scanning her fingerprint at any micro ATM or biometric point-of-sale (POS) terminal, and entering the Aadhaar number linked to the bank account. A merchant-led model of AEPS, called Aadhaar Pay, has also been launched.

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) mobile application. This will enable merchants to receive payments through fingerprint scans of customers.

“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.

Aadhaar’s growing importance in the economy has only served to deepen concerns about potential data breaches. And there are other concerns as well.

For instance, the Aadhaar biometric authentication failure rate in the rural job guarantee scheme, which assures 100 days of work a year to one member of every rural household, is as high as 36% in the southern state of Telangana, according to data released by the state government.

“Aadhaar is supposed to be an enabler and it will happen only when it is made voluntary. Biometric authentications might fail due to poor data connectivity and transactions might not happen even though the Aadhaar number of the person is there; so, what’s the benefit,” asked Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based think tank.

Aadhaar was the brainchild of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which lost power in the 2014 general election to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The first 10 Aadhaar numbers were handed over to residents of a small village called Tembhli in Maharashtra on 29 September 2010 in the presence of then prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and Aadhaar’s chief architect Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder of software services giant Infosys Ltd.

After coming to power, the NDA systematically went about making Aadhaar the pivot of government welfare programmes. In March last year, Parliament passed the Aadhaar Bill to make the use of Aadhaar mandatory for availing of government subsidies despite resistance from opposition parties.

Last month, finance minister Arun Jaitley said the 12-digit number would eventually become a single, monolithic proof of identity for every Indian, replacing every other identity card.

To be sure, Aadhaar has helped the government better target beneficiaries of its welfare programmes, cutting out middlemen and corruption. For instance, the government claims to have saved about Rs50,000 crore in cooking gas subsidies by linking the Aadhaar number with bank accounts in which the subsidy is directly transferred.

Yet, Aadhaar has its critics, who have challenged the project on grounds including potential compromise of national security, violation of the right to privacy and exclusion of people from welfare programmes. The Supreme Court has cautioned the government that no citizen can be denied access to welfare programmes for lack of an Aadhaar number.

Before cricketer Dhoni’s data breach made the headlines, in February, UIDAI filed a complaint against Axis Bank Ltd, business correspondent Suvidhaa Infoserve and e-sign provider eMudhra, alleging they had attempted unauthorized authentication and impersonation by illegally storing Aadhaar biometrics. The breach was noticed after one individual performed 397 biometric transactions between 14 July 2016 and 19 February 2017. All three entities have been temporarily barred from offering Aadhaar-related services until UIDAI makes a final decision.

Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said rules on the use of Aadhaar data are inadequate.

“UIDAI is allowed to share the information of a person from its database on its website, after taking proper consent of that person. However, there is no law which states what should be done if any other party does that with the same individual. Such rules must be in place,” Prakash said.

Four years after the Aadhaar project took off, a retired judge took the government to court. K. Puttaswamy, a former judge of the Karnataka high court, moved the Supreme Court in 2013, arguing that Aadhaar violated his fundamental right to privacy under the constitution. The case opened the gates for legal challenges to Aadhaar. Over the next few years till date, at least a dozen cases had questioned the legality of the project.

Ramon Magsaysay award winner Aruna Roy brought a case on behalf of manual workers whose faint finger prints, she said, often go undetected. Currently, only 44 million out of the 101 million beneficiaries of India’s rural job entitlement are paid through Aadhaar.

To be sure, India’s Constitution does not contain a black and white reference to a “fundamental right to privacy”, that the government cannot violate. The list of rights says “no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to a procedure established by law”—often interpreted by courts as an all-encompassing right including right to live with dignity, right to speedy justice and even a right to clean air.

Nilekani, the man behind Aadhaar, has cautioned that privacy is a broader issue involving how people retain their privacy in day-to-day life. “Privacy is an all-encompassing issue because of the rapid rate of digitization the world is seeing. Your smartphone has sensors, GPS and is generating more and more information about everything; voice-activated devices could also be recording your conversations. There’s a profusion of CCTV cameras at malls, restaurants, ATMs recording your movements,” Nilekani said in a recent interview with The Economic Times.

But this is where a problem arises. Although there is concurrence on the need for a privacy law, there is a great reluctance on the part of the government to come out with one.

“We don’t have a comprehensive privacy law; all our databases are unlinked. The government is trying to link the databases using Aadhaar for all schemes but a separate privacy law must be there for protecting any piece of information, whether or not linked to Aadhaar,” said Rahul Matthan, a partner at law firm Trilegal and a Mint columnist.

Matthan said first a privacy law must be put in place and then there has to be a discussion on what all it must include.

The government on its part pointed out that India’s apex court itself has been indecisive on a right to privacy.

“The larger question on privacy needs to be settled by the court. Till then, one cannot comment on secondary concerns,” attorney general Mukul Rohatgi said in an interview.

In 2015, the Supreme Court decided that a bench of at least seven judges will rule on the privacy issue, while clarifying that the government cannot make Aadhaar a mandatory proof of identity for its welfare schemes. Twenty months after the judicial order, the larger bench is yet to be formed by the apex court. The passing of the Aadhaar Act in Parliament to provide statutory backing to Aadhaar also indicates a departure from the Indian government’s position of not taking a legislative stand while an issue is under the apex court’s consideration.

For example, one of the reasons the Indian government has shown restraint in repealing a colonial law that criminalizes homosexuality is because the apex court is seized of the issue.

In the absence of legislation and pending an authoritative ruling by the top court, whether 1.3 billion Indians are entitled to their privacy remains a grey area. Meanwhile, the government is seemingly in the final stretch of its Aadhaar enrolment drive.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-april-21-2017-komal-gupta-apurva-vishwanath-suranjana-roy-aadhaar-a-widening-net

Aadhaar-enabled smartphones will ease money transfer

praskrishna — 2016-08-10T13:33:54Z

With its plans to make smartphones Aadhaar-enabled, the government hopes to provide users a means to do self-authentication and let businesses and banks verify the identity of their clients through their smartphones, a move that could potentially lead the way to a cashless society.

The article by Neha Alawadhi and Gulveen Aulakh was published in the Economic Times on August 10, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

"Iris and fingerprint sensors are now becoming a standard feature in smartphones anyway, and this requirement will only take a minor tweak to the operating system. Once enabled, people will be able to use phones to do self-authentication and KYC (know your customer)," Nandan Nikelani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, told ET, welcoming the government's plan to make smartphones Aadhaar-enabled.

ET was the first to report that on July 27 a meeting between UIDAI, which administers Aadhaar, and senior executives of smartphone-makers discussed ways to allow smartphone handsets let citizens authenticate their fingerprints and iris on the phone to get services. The most immediate use for the Aadhaar-enabled smartphones is the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), the new payment system that allows money transfer between any two parties using mobile phones and a virtual payment address.

"The two-factor authentication in UPI is now being done with mobile phone as one factor, and MPIN as the second factor. But once you have Aadhaar authentication on the phone, then the second factor can be biometric authentication through Aadhaar," said Nilekani. Over time, the idea is to open Aadhaar authentication to third party apps, said another person familiar with the ongoing discussions, who did not wish to be named.

In effect, biometric and iris scan authentication could become one of the permissions a user grants to different third party apps, such as access to camera, contacts, phone book and so on. Handset makers have raised concerns about some security issues on using iris scan for Aadhar authentication. Also, companies such as Apple that have very closed ecosystems, would not be easy to get on board, several people told ET.

"The primary challenge lies in safe storing of the iris scan between the time it is captured by the camera and then sent to UIDAI server seeking authentication," said an industry insider, who is aware of the discussions, requesting anonymity. The proposal for smartphone makers includes a "hardware secure zone" where biometric data will be encrypted and sent out. It will not leave the electronic secure zone without encryption, and every phone doing Aadhaar authentication will be registered in the UID system.

"Unfortunately, from the biometric sensor the data goes to the hardware secure zone via the operating system. Therefore, the biometric data can be intercepted by the operating system before it is sent to the hardware secure zone," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Bengaluru-based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society.

"The reluctance to make changes at the vendor level are mainly coming from a desire for control of biometric data for strategic and commercial purposes. Privacy and security are bogus reasons," Nilekani said, adding that both ends - the handset and the Aadhaar database -- will use the highest level of encryption.

Samsung India, which in May launched the Galaxy Tab Iris, a device that uses Aadhaar authentication, said it has taken care that its user's biometric data does not fall into the wrong hands. "We ensure that biometric data is encrypted as per UIDAI specifications in device itself for Galaxy Tab Iris," Sukesh Jain, vice president, Samsung India Electronics, told ET in an email response.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-august-10-2016-neha-alawadhi-gulveen-aulakh-aadhaar-enabled-smartphones-will-ease-money-transfer

Aadhaar's the largest biometric database globally but it is leaky by design

praskrishna — 2017-05-12T15:35:00Z

It the largest biometric database in the world and it is fraught with security issues.

The article by Rohith Jyothish was published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2017. This article by Rohith Jyothish originally appeared on Global Voices on May 2, 2017

Over the last few months, the Indian twittersphere has been awash with citizens concerned about government websites leaking millions of individual digital ID numbers.

On May 1, the Centre for Internet and Society, a multi-disciplinary think tank in Bangalore, released a report indicating that faulty information security practices have exposed as many as 135 million ID numbers, leaked from four government databases. The data leaks originated in the process of implementing online dashboards that were likely meant for general transparency and easy administration by the government agencies.

Developed by the Union government of India in 2009, the plan called for the creation a Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that would issue Unique Identity numbers (UIDs) to all residents of India. Under this scheme, now known as Aadhaar, the UID number ties together several pieces of a person's demographic and biometric information, including their photograph, ten fingerprints and an image of their iris. This information is all stored in a centralized database.

The scheme has so far enrolled 1.13 billion Indians and residents of India, making it the largest biometric database in the world.

This has become a point of pride for government agencies involved in the program. Information Technology Minister Ravishankar Prasad (@rsprasad) tweeted:

Expanding programmes

Aadhaar was built to be used as an identity authentication mechanism that could have multiple services being built on top of it. The scheme was run under an executive order from its inception in 2009 until the Aadhaar Act was passed in 2016. The strategies employed by its supporters generated substantial controversy, and it since has been challenged in the Supreme Court on budgetary grounds. But thus far, it remains in place.

The UIDAI has maintained that the scheme is voluntary. Yet the central government has pushed state governments to include UID for a wide range of essential government services meant to be available to the public.

Independent news portal Scroll regularly covers issues related to UID’s linkages with various welfare programs through its Identity Project. In recent years, Scroll has identified multiple examples of public services being denied to individuals who did not have a UID.

In Delhi in 2015, food rations were denied to those without UID numbers. In April 2016 in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan, UID-enabled food subsidies repeatedly recorded authentication failures.

Six months after Aadhaar was introduced in Rajasthan, state officials report that 10-15% of beneficiaries who normally received food grains from the government (under the National Food Security Act) have been denied some or all of their rations because the system could not authenticate their UIDs. A local farm laborer told Scroll that his rations had been drastically reduced since the arrival of Aadhaar. “In some cases, when we put our fingers, the machine reads out 5 kg, 10 kg, or 15 kg as our entitlement. But we are entitled to 35 kg as per the government norms.”

Advocates are quick to note that there is no adequate avenue to remedy in these situations, leaving citizens with little recourse or ability to seek that these errors be corrected.

In spite of multiple court orders making UID voluntary and limited to selected schemes, the government continues to expand its scope.

Delicate infrastructure and its misuse

According to economist Jean Drèze, the new authentication system requires a lot of fragile technologies to work at the same time, such as a point of sale machine, internet connectivity, biometrics, remote servers and mobile networks. He also maintains that the primary cause of corruption in disbursement of food subsidies is related to the quantity of rations distributed or quantity fraud, which UID doesn't address.

Another economist who has worked extensively on these issues, Reetika Khera points out that the exclusion of large number of people from welfare schemes has not been because of lack of an identity, but rather due to “measly budgets and exclusion errors.“

Contention with the court

The Supreme Court issued two orders in September 2013 and March 2014 which stated that “no person shall be deprived of any service for want of Aadhaar number in case he/she is otherwise eligible/entitled.” On August 11, 2015, the court issued yet another order which limited the use of UID to food, kerosene and cooking gas subsidies. On October 15, it further expanded it to four more schemes: the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (a scheme for financial inclusion), and policies related to pension and provident funds, after the government argued that it would be difficult to roll back UID now that it is the most used national identity system and is linked to service delivery in several major welfare schemes.

‘Leaky’ by design

Following the repeated arguments by the state that UID makes it possible to weed out ‘ghost beneficiaries’ and ‘de-duplicate’ multiple IDs, revelations of fake ‘UID cards’ began to circulate. These UID cards were reportedly issued under the names of pets, historical figures, one alleged spy and even gods.

More recently, the Indian twittersphere has been vocal in pointing to government websites leaking sensitive information from the UID database. In February, security researcher Srinivas Kodali exposed a parallel database containing UID numbers and other details of 5-600,000 children.

In another case, UID numbers of scholarship-holders sat on a state government website for over a year.

On March 22, 2017, tech worker @St_Hill exposed the severity of the problem by showing spreadsheets of personal data that appear with just a single Google search.

This was immediately taken down. But new ones continue to appear with other simple Google searches.

Under the hashtag #AadhaarLeaks, Twitter users have reported numerous such cases on various government websites. The leaks gained popular attention on social media when former Indian men’s cricket team captain MS Dhoni’s UID appeared in a tweet sent by a UID enrollment operator.

The government response

The UIDAI responded to the uproar with a campaign entitled #AadhaarStars, in which parents of young children were encouraged to post 30-second videos of what UID meant to them.

This was rejected by angry twitterati through the hashtag #AadhaarFail which now offers a compendium of tweets about UID-based authentication failures.

In the last couple of months, after the privacy and security-related concerns became louder, the UIDAI has shut down enrollment operators, websites and payment applications for misuse of biometrics data. The central government has even warned state departments against leaking UID data on their portals.

As the uncertainty looms, privacy researcher Amber Sinha and aforementioned security researcher Srinivas Kodali estimated the size of #AadhaarLeaks.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-rohith-jyothish-may-5-2017-aadhaar-the-largest-biometric-database-globally-but-it-is-leaky-by-design

Aadhaar security: Here's how your private information can be protected

praskrishna — 2017-05-19T10:05:25Z

Lock Aadhaar, and notify UIDAI if you get a one-time-password for a transaction you did not initiate

The article by Sanjay Kumar Singh was published in the Business Standard on May 11, 2017. Udbhav Tiwari was quoted.

The linking of Aadhaar — the 12-digit unique identification number for Indian residents — across various benefits is going through a roller-coaster ride. On one hand, the government, keen to make it mandatory, is linking it with filing of income-tax returns and benefits. But, on the other, many are uncomfortable with it because of privacy issues and leakages that have been reported recently. The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, referred another fresh plea challenging the Aadhaar Act and its mandatory use in government schemes to a larger Constitution bench.

There has been several reports that say that Aadhaar numbers and other personal data are being leaked. Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has published a report (titled Information security practices of Aadhaar, or lack thereof) where it lists four government departments that have posted Aadhaar numbers and other personal information of people. According to the report, an estimated 130-135 million Aadhaar numbers and 100 million bank account numbers were posted on the four portals that the CIS researchers checked. Normally such data should be kept on the government’s intranet, where only authorised people can access it. However, a few government departments have uploaded this data on their websites. In many cases, the data was in excel format, making it all the more easy for people to download and misuse it. The worst part: If your data is stolen, you cannot file even a First Information Report with the police. Only the nodal body, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), can file a police complaint.

Your data can be misused: Experts say that leakage of Aadhaar numbers and other personal information into the public domain violates peoples’ privacy. “Your name, phone number, address, bank account number and Aadhaar number are personal information. Only you have the right to decide whether to release such information to others. Such data shouldn’t be complied in excel sheets in large numbers and be freely accessible on the internet to everyone," says Udbhav Tiwari, policy officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru.

Tele-marketers and advertisers will have access to the personal information of all those people. More serious problems such as identity theft can occur. Says Smitha Krishna Prasad, project manager, Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi: “The more sensitive information a person has about you, the easier it becomes to impersonate you when that person is speaking to, say, a bank." The impersonator could open a bank account or even take a loan in your name.

Suppose a hacker gets your email ID. “He will use the ‘password reset or forgot password’ feature to change your password and get access to your account. This feature poses questions based on personal info about you. Any such data collected about you comes useful here. Such hackers mine a lot of data about potential victims from all possible sources," says Shomiron Das Gupta of NetMonastery, a threat management provider. In the email, he could find info about your bank account, credit card account, etc, and cause financial losses to you.

Serious risks can also arise if someone manages to breach the biometric authentication or one-time password (OTP) required for using the Aadhaar system. “It is possible to copy an individual’s fingerprints, and replicate them using very commonly available resins. It is also possible for hackers to capture the data being communicated between a telephone tower and a mobile phone, especially if it is poorly encrypted. This will allow the hacker to see the OTP. Admittedly, this does require expertise and a targeted effort vis-a-vis an individual," says Tiwari. Now that the Aadhaar numbers of so many people have been divulged, someone could utilise their identities to steal their government-granted benefits, or obtain a SIM card, which could then be misused. Raman Jit Singh Chima, policy director, Access Now, says at many places where the Aadhaar number is required today, no biometric authentication is done. So just the number can be used to impersonate you.

Lock your biometrics: If your Aadhaar number and other personal information have been leaked, here are a few steps you can take to safeguard yourself. One, be wary of any calls you receive asking for additional details, which may not have been leaked already. Be equally wary if you receive a call wherein someone rattles off your personal data and asks you to verify it. The caller could pretend to be calling from your bank. It is best not to reveal or confirm any information over the phone at all. Two, you have the option to lock your biometric data online. Even if someone manages to steal your fingerprint, he will not be able to use it if you have locked your biometric data (see table). Also, if you get an OTP on your phone for an Aadhaar utilisation that you did not initiate, notify the UIDAI, and thus ensure that no transaction is carried out using your Aadhaar account.

Need for a privacy law: To prevent data leaks in the future, the government needs to sensitise state government officials who work with Aadhaar data about the need to protect the its privacy. More importantly, India needs a comprehensive data protection law. At present, there is limited provision in the Information Technology Act of 2008 under which you can file a civil case against a corporate that has leaked your personal information. “The person affected by data leakage has to show that he has suffered wrongful loss, or somebody else has enjoyed a wrongful gain, and then claim compensation," says Prasad.

After the Radia tapes incident, the government had said it would pass a comprehensive privacy law. “This law would lead to the creation of a data protection authority with enforcement powers, which would be able to penalise both companies and government bodies violating privacy principles. Despite the process beginning in 2012-13, and multiple drafts being leaked into the public domain, there has not been much progress on this count," says Chima. He adds that when the privacy law becomes a reality, any part of the Aadhaar Act that is contrary to it should also be amended.

How to lock your biometric data online

Go to the UIDAI web site: https://uidai.gov.inGo to Aadhaar services, then Lock/Unlock Biometrics Enter Aadhaar number Enter security code that appears below the Aadhaar numberYou will receive an OTP on your registered mobile number. Enter it Click ‘Verify’Click box against ‘Enable biometric lock’Click on Submit buttonSame procedure can be repeated to disable biometric lock.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-sanjay-kumar-singh-aadhaar-security-here-is-how-your-private-information-can-be-protected

Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T11:10:37Z

Aadhaar numbers and personal information of as many as 135 million Indians could have been leaked from four government portals due to lack of IT security practices, the Centre for Internet and Society has claimed.

The article was published by DNA on May 2, 2017.

"Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these four portals could be around 130-135 million," the report by CIS said.

Further, as many as 100 million bank account numbers could have been "leaked" from the four portals, it added.

The portals where the purported leaks happened were those of National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, as well as two websites of the Andhra Pradesh government.

"Over 23 crore beneficiaries have been brought under Aadhaar programme for DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer), and if a significant number of schemes have mishandled data in a similar way, we could be looking at a data leak closer to that number," it cautioned.

The disclosure came as part of a CIS report titled 'Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A Documentation of Public Availability of Aadhaar Numbers with Sensitive Personal Financial Information'.

When contaced, a senior official of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that there was no breach in its own database. The UIDAI issues Aadhaar to citizens.

The CIS report claimed that the absence of "proper controls" in populating the databases could have disastrous results as it may divulge sensitive information about individuals, including details about address, photographs and financial data.

"The lack of consistency of data masking and de- identification standard is an issue of great concern...the masking of Aadhaar numbers does not follow a consistent pattern," the report added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dna-may-2-2017-report-aadhaar-numbers-of-135-mn-may-have-leaked-claims-cis-report

Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T10:42:59Z

The news was published by the Press Trust of India on May 2, 2017.

"Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these four portals could be around 130-135 million," the report by CIS said.

Further, as many as 100 million bank account numbers could have been "leaked" from the four portals, it added.

The portals where the purported leaks happened were those of National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, as well as two websites of the Andhra Pradesh government.

"Over 23 crore beneficiaries have been brought under Aadhaar programme for DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer), and if a significant number of schemes have mishandled data in a similar way, we could be looking at a data leak closer to that number," it cautioned.

The disclosure came as part of a CIS report titled 'Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A Documentation of Public Availability of Aadhaar Numbers with Sensitive Personal Financial Information'.

When contaced, a senior official of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that there was no breach in its own database. The UIDAI issues Aadhaar to citizens.

The CIS report claimed that the absence of "proper controls" in populating the databases could have disastrous results as it may divulge sensitive information about individuals, including details about address, photographs and financial data.

"The lack of consistency of data masking and de- identification standard is an issue of great concern...the masking of Aadhaar numbers does not follow a consistent pattern," the report added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/pti-news-may-2-2017-aadhaar-numbers-of-135mn-may-have-leaked-claims-cis-report

Aadhaar numbers of 135 mn may have leaked, claims CIS report

praskrishna — 2017-05-12T15:40:28Z

The article was published in the Times of India on May 2, 2017.

"Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these four portals could be around 130-135 million," the report by CIS said.

Further, as many as 100 million bank account numbers could have been "leaked" from the four portals, it added.

When contaced, a senior official of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that there was no breach in its own database. The UIDAI issues Aadhaar to citizens.

"The lack of consistency of data masking and de- identification standard is an issue of great concern...the masking of Aadhaar numbers does not follow a consistent pattern," the report added. SR MBI MR

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-may-5-2017-aadhaar-numbers-of-135-mn-may-have-leaked-claims-cis-report

Aadhaar is actually surveillance tech: Sunil Abraham

praskrishna — 2016-03-16T17:07:39Z

On March 12, the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, paving the way for giving legal status to Aadhaar, a 12-digit unique identification number generated after collecting biometric and other details of an Indian resident.

Sahil Makkar on behalf of Business Standard interviewed Sunil Abraham. The article was published on March 12, 2016.

The government intends to use Aadhaar to roll out more subsidy schemes and allay privacy concerns. However, activists are not convinced. Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bengaluru based-research organisation The Centre for Internet & Society, tells Sahil Makkar that the concept of Aadhaar is principally flawed and it doesn't substantially help in plugging leakages in government schemes. Edited excerpts:

What is your position on Aadhaar and the UIDAI Bill?

What technology has broken cannot be fixed by the law. Aadhaar is a broken technology; it is surveillance technology disguised as developmental intervention that identifies people without their consent and authenticates transactions on their behalf. The architecture is a disaster from the security perspective and there is no recourse in law for citizens whose rights have been infringed. The other objection should be to the subtitle of the Bill that mentions "services": it is unclear whether Aadhaar is to be provided to the residents or the citizens. A bulk of the government services is meant for citizens.

What are the repercussions of this "broken technology"?

Consent happens without conscious cooperation during the authentication process of getting access to a subsidy or a service. Also, the person providing the service is holding a biometric reader and he may say the device is not working and hence, refuse the subsidy. Yet the database will reflect that the subsidy has been availed of because authentication has already been completed. So you have to accept what the person is saying because only that person and the UIDAI have access to the information. Aadhaar makes the citizen transparent to the state but makes the state completely opaque and unaccountable to its citizens.

Will the beneficiary not receive a message about the transaction?

That will only happen when the banks are involved. At the subsidised ration shop the beneficiary will get nothing. The world over security professionals don't trust biometric-based authentication, relying rather on other revocable authentication factors. It is irrevocable if the biometric details are compromised. Instead, writable smart cards could be used to record details of government officers on the cards of beneficiaries and make both the state and the resident transparent to each other.

Hasn't the National Population Register under the Ministry of Home Affairs been advocating the use of smart cards?

In this case biometrics should be used only to link the individual to the smart card. Biometric information should be stored on smart cards and under no circumstances should there be a central repository of biometrics at one place. Maintaining a central database is akin to getting the keys of every house in Delhi and storing them at a central police station. The chances of getting a central database compromised depend on the nature of information stored in it. For the sake of security one can't create a honey pot to be attacked by many. The internet is secure because it doesn't have a central database. The other difference is that faking biometrics is much easier than faking smart cards.

So your principle opposition is to the setting up of a central repository of biometrics?

I am also opposed to the use of biometrics for identification and authentication; this is nothing but surveillance. It is very easy to capture iris data of any individual with the use of next generation cameras. Imagine a situation when the police is secretly capturing the iris data of protesters and then identifying them through their biometric records.

But if the security agencies are able to identify those who create law and order problems, what is the hitch?

It is exactly the same argument that Apple is giving while refusing back-door entry to intelligence and investigating agencies. Once you build surveillance capacity for good governance, it may be misused by a repressive government, a rogue corporation or by criminals. Fear of this type of surveillance will deter people from holding any protest.

Doesn't the Aadhaar or the UIDAI conform to safety and security provisions in the IT Act?

The standards in our IT Act are woefully inadequate in comparison to European regulators and courts. If it adhered to the highest standards, the European privacy commissioner and data protection authorities would have given India adequacy status. The second problem is that the current IT Act doesn't apply to the government. If the government holds your data, it is under no obligation to protect your rights.

You have been part of the Justice A P Shah Committee on privacy. How important is it to have a separate privacy law in the present context?

It is not only important for the purpose of safeguarding human rights, but also to protect the competitiveness of our BPO, ITeS and KPO sectors. We need a data protection law that is compliant with European Data Protection Regulation.

How will such a law help a common man whose data have been compromised?

It will provide clarity to an individual about where he or she stands with regard to privacy. It is strange that the government took diametrically opposite stands in two cases related to privacy in the Supreme Court. When some activists demanded that the UIDAI be scrapped, the government argued before the court that there was no Constitutional right to privacy. When the police asked for the biometric records from the UIDAI, the same government argued there was a right to privacy and that it couldn't divulge the details to the police. The government is not speaking in the same voice; even courts are not speaking in the same voice, because there have been conflicting judgements. So the proposed law will provide clarity on privacy and people will be able to seek compensation under it.

At the same time it cannot be denied that Aadhaar can plug leakages and save hundreds and thousands of rupees for the exchequer....

Aadhaar is only answering two questions: Is this particular biometric unique (enrolment) and does it match the template in the database? If you bring a Bangladeshi into the system, it will answer both the questions in the affirmative. The Aadhaar only eliminates the possibility of one person receiving the benefits twice. At the same time it is very easy to put a ghost beneficiary back into the system. If Aadhaar has to work, we need a publicly visible auditable trail of subsidy moving from Delhi to the villages. That will eliminate corruption in the supply chain.

Isn't it difficult for a large number of ghost beneficiaries to get into the system?

There is no way to check whether a genuine or a ghost beneficiary has been removed from the list. It is not a foolproof system because no one is vouching for anybody. In the current system it is difficult to find out who created this ghost beneficiary. Nobody loses a job for creating a ghost; in fact, here everyone has an incentive.

If there are problems with the UIDAI system, why is the government upbeat about it?

As techno-utopians our government wants technology to answer everything and solve all our problems. If anything goes wrong, it can easily be blamed on technology.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-sahil-makkar-march-12-2016-aadhaar-is-actually-surveillance-tech-sunil-abraham