[Over the past decade, more than a billion citizens were enrolled in the government’s database. To reach the remote corners of the country, officials went to tribal villages, setting up pop-up registration centers at schools or going door to door to enter records of more than 2 billion Indian eyeballs and 10 billion fingerprints into a government database. Records of citizens’ bank accounts, addresses, income tax filings and other digital data were compiled and linked.]
By
Vidhi Doshi
 |
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A
woman has her fingerprints read during the registration process for Aadhaar
cards
in
Amritsar, India, in July. (Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images)
|
NEW
DELHI — India’s Supreme
Court on Wednesday upheld the validity of a giant and controversial government
program to collect and store the biometric data of its billion-plus citizens
but placed new limits on how the data can be used and stored.
A five-judge panel ruled 4 to 1 that while
the government’s flagship Aadhaar program has huge benefits in delivering
welfare efficiently, biometric data can no longer be used by private entities
such as banks or cellphone operators for authentication purposes, curbing the
program’s ambitious scope as a universal ID.
“Aadhaar empowers the marginalized section of
the society and gives them an identity,” Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri said in
delivering the 1,448-page verdict.
The judgment also noted, however, that “there
needs to be balancing of two competing fundamental rights, right to privacy on
one hand, and right to food, shelter, and employment on the other hand.”
Aadhaar — meaning “foundation” in Hindi —
provides each citizen with a unique 12-digit number, linked to their iris scans
and fingerprints. Started in 2009 under India’s previous administration and
expanded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Aadhaar program was hailed by the
government as a tool to bring India into the digital age and help restructure
its tax and welfare system as part of the “Digital India” program.
The government’s original idea was to be able
to easily identify people fraudulently claiming government benefits, such as
food or fuel rations.
But over the years, it has morphed from a
welfare delivery tool to a near-necessity for everyday life in India. Citizens
have been asked for their Aadhaar cards to access a host of government and
private services, including new bank accounts, school enrollments and airline
reservations.
The Supreme Court’s order will restrict the
program’s usage to government services only — Aadhaar will be necessary for
collecting food rations or fuel subsidies but no longer for opening a bank
account or getting a new cellphone SIM card. Children, upon reaching adulthood,
can now opt out of the program, should they no longer need welfare services
from the state, the court said.
“The majority has upheld the goal of Aadhaar
and said that it pursues a legitimate state aim,” said Zoheb Hossain, a
government lawyer. He added that the state could still pass legislation to
allow private organizations to use Aadhaar.
Prasanna S., a lawyer representing
petitioners, said the court delivered a “body blow” to the “vision of the
Aadhaar project as a universal and ubiquitous ID.” The order “effectively makes
Aadhaar voluntary, not mandatory,” he said.
Over the past decade, more than a billion
citizens were enrolled in the government’s database. To reach the remote
corners of the country, officials went to tribal villages, setting up pop-up
registration centers at schools or going door to door to enter records of more
than 2 billion Indian eyeballs and 10 billion fingerprints into a government
database. Records of citizens’ bank accounts, addresses, income tax filings and
other digital data were compiled and linked.
But the program’s flaws were evident. Critics
say that some of India’s neediest were denied their food rations and other
welfare entitlements because of authentication errors or Internet connectivity
problems.
Media outlets and online activists also
reported vulnerabilities in the technology and the way in which the data is
collected — a report by the Center for Internet and Society said government
websites may have accidentally leaked details of 135 million citizens.
India’s Tribune newspaper reported that
private operators contracted to enroll people offered to sell access to the
database for $11, and HuffPost reported that hackers were using a patch to
disable security features of the enrollment software and could easily create
fraudulent identities.
In 2012, a retired high court judge from the
southern Indian city of Bangalore filed the first petition against the program
to the Supreme Court, saying that Aadhaar had no statutory basis and violated
the right to privacy.
K.S. Puttaswamy, now 92, was worried that the
program could be abused by illegal immigrants from neighboring countries, who
might have used their biometric ID cards to claim citizenship.
As the government’s program expanded, the
retired judge’s petition swelled into a movement centered on privacy, security
and denials of welfare entitlements due to authentication problems. More than
two dozen petitioners raised problems with Aadhaar, including a retired army
general and the scientist who helped create eLocutor — Stephen Hawking’s single-button
electronic voice machine.
They said that Aadhaar was a dangerous “Big
Brother” program and could be used to keep tabs on how citizens spend money,
where they travel and whom they call. “As the Snowden revelations show, if the
state has the power, there is always a temptation,” said Nachiket Udupa, one of
the petitioners, referring to former National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden, who leaked details of the U.S. government’s electronic surveillance
programs.
Government lawyers disputed claims that
privacy was at stake, saying that the data was kept in “silos” — so a bank
would never know if someone had claimed monthly rations or filed taxes.
The lawyers filed reports demonstrating how
fraud — double-dipping, ghost beneficiaries and counterfeit identities — added
enormous strain to the country’s stretched welfare system. Trillions of rupees
were allocated by the government for the welfare program, and more than half
the money never reached beneficiaries, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal said.
This was the heart of the quandary facing the
five-judge panel: the state’s duty to provide welfare services to India’s huge
population so it can have a dignified existence versus citizens’ right to
privacy.
Though the program will continue, Apar Gupta,
a lawyer for the petitioners, said the verdict was an “incremental victory” for
privacy activists. “The court only commented on constitutionality, but during
this hearing, the public policy benefits of Aadhaar have also been called into
question.”
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