Human life cycle management: UIDAI plans linking Aadhaar with birth, death

 From assigning temporary Aadhaar numbers to newborns to tracking deaths in hospitals, UIDAI is looking to expand the programme to cover a person’s entire lifecycle

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which has enrolled nearly all of India’s adult population since 2010, is now looking to expand Aadhaar to cover a person’s entire lifecycle with two ambitious pilot programmes, a media report said on Wednesday. According to an Economic Times report, newborn infants will receive a temporary Aadhaar number to be renewed with biometric data on attainment of majority, as the UIDAI prepares to launch the programmes to deepen its reach countrywide.

“The allocation of a UIDAI number at birth will ensure that children and families benefit from government programmes and no one is left out of the social security net,” ET quoted one official as saying. Teams will visit newborns’ families and complete the formalities of registering their biometrics, after which a permanent Aadhaar number shall be allocated, the report said, adding that once a child turns 18, biometrics will be re-registered to ensure that multiple IDs are not generated for the same child.

Aadhaar mess up: Maharashtra govt freezes farm loan waiver to reverify beneficiaries

The government expects to complete the verification by November 15

The Maharashtra government has frozen its farm loan waiver to reverify beneficiaries after names of 100 farmers were found to be linked to a single Aadhaar number.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis convened a meeting with the State Level Banking Committee as well as the IT department to fix the problem and a new list of beneficiaries of the farm loan waiver scheme has been sent to banks on who have been authorised to release funds immediately.

The government expects to complete reverification by November 15. It had earlier aimed at disbursing money by October-end.

When a loan waiver was announced by the UPA government in 2008, money was transferred to banks without any scrutiny and the implementation took 18 months, while his government released funds within three months, he said in a PTI report.

"However, we realised that around one lakh bank accounts had same Aadhar numbers. So the data had to be cleaned. But a new list has been released and we have deposited Rs 4,000 crore in the central account of ICICI Bank and they have been authorised to release the funds immediately," Fadnavis told PTI.( economy policy)

To a query on farmer suicides, Fadnavis said suicides are taking place for the last twenty years, and to prevent them, his government has increased the investment in the sector three-fold, which has led to the agriculture growth to reach 12.5 per cent from the earlier negative growth.

Applications of who have received the money won’t face scrutiny, Mungantiwar said.

 

Now, Aadhaar a must for PPF, post office, Kisan Vikas Patra deposits

Govt insisted on quoting Aadhaar for bank deposits, obtaining mobile phone and several other utilities to weed out benami deals and black money 

economy policy: The government has made biometric identification Aadhaar mandatory for all post office deposits, PPF, the National Savings Certificate scheme and Kisan Vikas Patra.

Existing depositors have been given time till December 31, 2017, to provide the 12-digit unique identification number.

Ministry of Finance has issued four separate Gazette notifications making Aadhaar mandatory for opening all post office deposit accounts, Public Provident Fund (PPF), National Savings Certificate scheme and Kisan Vikas Patra deposits.

"Provided that where Aadhaar number has not been assigned, the depositor shall submit proof of application for enrolment for Aadhaar," the notification dated September 29 said.

Existing depositors who have not provided Aadhaar number at the time of application for such deposit "shall submit his Aadhaar number to the post office savings bank or deposit office concerned, on or before December 31, 2017," it added...READ MORE

Privacy a fundamental right? Here are 5 concerns with Aadhaar

A centralised and inter-linked database like Aadhaar will lead to profiling and self-censorship

Privacy has been a key focus in the recent debate on Aadhaar. This is a very welcome development. Aadhar Privacy is being interpreted in different, equally valid, ways by different sets of people. But the differences in interpretations are not always obvious to those who participate in the discussions. For instance, when computer scientists use the word privacy, they tend to it interpret from a narrow ‘data security’ perspective, whereas the lawyers in the Supreme Court have been highlighting the civil liberties angle to it. This has resulted in groups talking past each other – the solutions that the computer scientists propose, for instance, (like stronger standards for data security, including encryption) are not satisfactory to those who highlight the civil liberties aspects of privacy. Constructive conversation on the issue requires a more elaborate look ate the different dimensions of privacy.

Five privacy concerns

Possibly the narrowest view of privacy is the technical ‘data security’ point of view. The focus there is on what data need to be secure (the Aadhaar number, demographic information or biometrics), whether data stored in the Classless Inter-Domain Routing is secure (such as the encryption standards or the probability of hacking) and what would the consequences of data breaches be (for instance, some people ask what is the harm if an Aadhaar number is publicly displayed). The response of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and others is that data are encrypted using the highest standards, that access is severely restricted, and that, in any case, there have been no security breaches so far.(economy news)

Experts, however, believe that for centralised databases the question is not whether it can be hacked, but when. For instance, Bruce Schneier told Pranav Dixit, “When this database is hacked – and it will be – it will be because someone breaches the computer security that protects the computers actually using the data.”

A related concern that has been highlighted is that even if data are secure, with Aadhaar-enabled Payments System (AePS), the Aadhaar project has created a vulnerability to identity fraud, even identity theft. The idea behind AePS is, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, ‘Your thumbprint is your bank’. Fingerprint impressions, however, can be easily reproduced. For instance, recently Hindustan Times reported that 200 students in Mumbai replicated their fingerprints on a widely-used resin to fudge biometric attendance. Easy harvesting of biometrics traits and publicly-available Aadhaar numbers increase the risk of banking fraud. In the light of this emerging financial technology infrastructure which rides on Aadhaar and biometrics, the recent ‘Aadhaar leaks’ scandal (whereby Aadhaar numbers of lakhs of people were displayed on government portals) is significant. The emerging AePS architecture opens the door to identity theft. Even in the absence of data breaches, that is an alarming breach of privacy.

• Why is Aadhaar different?
• Aadhaar and the ‘personal data economy’
• Usual, inadequate responses

(read more)