Written by: Archana Chaudhary
Details of Indian citizens are collected in the database
“In India, the Aadhaar number has the same function as the social security number. It was set up to track every transaction with the government and private companies.â€
In February, Shivam Shankar Singh unexpectedly received an email from an Indian government agency. The information listed in the email includes the name, address, mobile number and bank account, as well as the funds transfer code and a record of investing in a dairy farm. But except for the email address, none of the information is his own.
The information contained in this email was previously submitted to a program that collects personal and biometric data. The message was originally intended for a resident of Bihar in eastern India. Singh is the polling manager of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Manipur, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is located. He called the other party according to the phone number listed in the email, but the phone could not be reached. Manipur is located in the eastern part of Bihar.
“I was shocked.†Singh, who described this encounter on Twitter. The email did not ask for information and did not ask him to click on any link, which means it was not a phishing attack, so he did not choose to call the police.
“It seems that someone used my email address to forge a fake identity to seek government benefits.â€
He said, "Of course, this may be just a mistake. But what I can be sure of is that no one wants to disclose all of their personal information to strangers. When this happens, the government is trying to create a 'de-cash'. The number of India."
Customers use their Aadhaar card (unique identification card) to withdraw funds
The government department responsible for collecting personal data said that the agency's system did not disclose information. The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, listed in the e-mail, said the ministry had ordered an investigation into the matter.
Regardless of the specific circumstances, the occurrence of this incident raised new questions for the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The only identity management authority in India was founded in 2009, and its more familiar name is “Aadhaarâ€, which means “foundation†in Hindi. It was originally created to identify citizenship and ensure that the corresponding state benefits go directly to their bank accounts.
Aadhaar is getting more and more attention because Prime Minister Modi has urged Indian citizens to join the program. Aadhaar assigns each user a 12-digit identity code that is critical to Modi's push payment transaction networking program. He hopes to enforce unique identity management across the country. In order to curb illegal hoarding of cash, Modi has abolished 86% of India's cash in early November 2016.
The Indian government is seeking to link the database (covering more than 1.2 billion people, including children, to approximately 88% of the country's population) to all national services (including enrollment, passport processing, and kitchen gas purchases). In fact, this will create more large databases. But given that India does not have a comprehensive privacy law, Indians have little to do with identity theft and data leakage.
After the ban on cash is issued, the number of citizens joining the biometrics program has soared.
Other countries are struggling to cope with the same problem: in 2010, the United Kingdom announced the abolition of the national identity registration scheme, because previously opponents said it violated civil liberties.
France is embarking on a major debate on whether to build a very large database of the biometric details of citizens based on the threat of terrorism. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2015, identity theft was ranked second in all complaints received by the agency, and its number increased by more than 47% from 2014.
Track "every transaction"
“In India, the Aadhaar number has the same function as the social security number. It was created to track every transaction with the government and private companies,†said Saber Hassis, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. Subhashis Banerjee said.
Banerjee and his team have written a paper on how to strengthen Aadhaar and its related systems, including the appointment of a third-party online audit agency, which is awaiting peer review.
“In an incredibly complex country like India, UIDAI is able to come up with such a great solution, which is good. But given its massive data collection, the agency needs more external oversight.â€
There are currently 582 registered users authorized to read Aadhaar data under the program, including banks, brokers and government agencies. Google Inc. expects India's digital payment industry to expand 10 times to $500 billion by 2020.
Aadhaar Biometric ID issued by the Independent Identification Authority of India
At the same time, the number of private companies based on Aadhaar data acquisition and delivery services is growing. UIDAI said in the newsletter that it has shut down 12 private websites and 12 mobile applications, and is about to further shut down 26 organizations that illegally obtain Aadhaar numbers or user registration information.
In February, in a series of cases against Aadhaar's lawyers (some lawyers opposed the entire Aadhaar plan, other lawyers opposed its expansion) said in the Supreme Court of India that the national policy of collecting data through the private sector raised privacy concerns.
According to court documents, the government said that the Aadhaar biometric identity card "will only be issued on the basis of mutual consent" and that "the information collected should not be used for any purpose other than the social security benefit plan."
Ajay Kumar, assistant secretary of the Information Technology Ministry, said that there may be some errors in any system when it comes to data leakage risks for companies that collect data. There have been some misdemeanor cases related to Aadhaar," Kumar said. "But the existing system is very strong and the number of minor crimes that have occurred is very small."
"We can't completely negate it because of one or two felony cases," Kumar added.
save money
Modi had opposed Aadhaar before he took office because it violated national security and the privacy of citizens. But now, Aadhaar has become part of Modi's “de-cash†deal. In India, a quarter of the total population does not read or write, but one-third have mobile phones that support online transactions.
India’s Minister of Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said in November 2016 that the direct transfer of state benefits through Aadhaar-based services helped India save $5 billion. The Modi office did not respond to calls from reporters seeking comment.
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive of UIDAI, said the database has multiple layers of technology and has so far received no complaints about security. Despite this, he said it is necessary to monitor private databases created using the Aadhaar database.
A customer holding an Aadhaar card withdraws money by fingerprint
Since Moody’s ban on cash, more than 46 million people have joined the program. Registering Aadhaar is now one of the requirements for national civil servant recruitment. The Reserve Bank of India allows commercial banks to use Aadhaar to verify the identity of new account customers. Prasad said on January 27 that Aadhaar's payment system is connected to 119 banks and has recorded 338.7 million transactions.
"Mint" and "Times of India" reported that UIDAI filed a police complaint claiming that Axis Bank, Suvidhaa Infoserve and eMudhra violated Aadhaar's biometric verification. Provisions. The Mingte newspaper also said that suspected violations may occur during system testing.
The Indian Concentric Bank said in an e-mail that the bank had blocked the "business communication partner" Suvidhaa from accessing the authority's database after receiving an alert about Suvidhaa's "discussed agreement to deviate from the UIDAI setting."
Lost data
A Suvidhaa spokesperson said the company will be ready to comment. V. Srinivasan, chairman of eMudhra, said in an email that the company was not aware of any criminal complaints and did not receive any communications from the authorities. UIDAI CEO Pandi did not respond to the reporter’s request for a call during non-office hours.
According to the Times of India, in April 2013, Maharashtra in western India said that the state had irrevocably lost data on 300,000 citizens when it was uploaded to Aadhaar’s server in Bangalore. .
Amit Jaju, executive director of fraud investigation and dispute services at Ernst & Young in Mumbai, said that Aidhaar's core technology is not the most exciting given the use of iris or fingerprint scanning technology. Worried about the problem. He said banks should pay close attention to the risks of using accounts created by the Aadhaar database and online fraud.
According to Pandi, Aadhaar is a “self-cleaning system†that is audited by a national agency when requested by the government. He said the government audit agency, Standardized Testing and Quality Certification Directorate, would certify all the hardware used to collect data, but had not yet audited its software and databases.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in an e-mail that the firm is responsible for cyber security inspection management for Aadhaar.
Publicly registered users of the Aadhaar Identity System include Auth Bridge Research Services Pvt Ltd. and Swabhimaan Distribution Services Pvt Ltd. The latter operates a mobile application called TrustID. Both companies use Aadhaar's biometric technology to help companies verify the identity of potential customers and employees.
TrustID CEO Rahul Pagare declined to comment. Auth Bridge CEO Ajay Trehan said Aadhaar must "audit users to ensure that organizations like ours are not vulnerable."
Trehan said his company has been using the system since 2015 and has not been audited by Aadhaar before.
This is what UIDAI needs to study.
Editor: Liu Xinwei, Guan Wenjing
Translation: Xu Zixuan
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