India’s Top Court Rules Massive Biometric Identity Database Legal—With Restrictions
India’s Top Court Rules Massive Biometric Identity
Database Legal—With Restrictions
Aadhaar program is constitutional and helps the poor, the
court says, ruling it can continue for disbursing welfare benefits
By Newley Purnell & Krishna Pokharel Sept. 26, 2018
8:05 a.m. ET
NEW DELHI—India’s highest court ruled that the world’s
largest biometric identification database doesn’t infringe on citizens’ privacy
rights—but needs some new limitations.
The country’s controversial Aadhaar program uses photos,
finger and eye scans and has already signed up more than 1 billion people. It
has sparked an intense global debate over how far a democracy should be able to
go in collecting the personal data of its citizens and how that data can be
used, shared and protected.
Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling was a response to
multiple challenges to the system.
A five-judge panel ruled in a 4-1 decision that the
program is constitutional and helps the poor by streamlining disbursement of
welfare benefits. Being in the database, however, shouldn’t be required for
using mobile phones, opening bank accounts or for school admissions, according
to the 1,448-page document outlining the court’s decision. It had been unclear
for some time whether such organizations could compel people to supply Aadhaar
numbers.
“It’s a historic judgment,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
said. “Everyone must realize, including critics of Aadhaar, that you can’t defy
technology or ignore it.”
Aadhaar has provided an important way to prove identity
to society’s marginalized citizens, particularly “those who are illiterate and
living in abject poverty or without any shelter,” the court said. Still, “there
needs to be balancing of two competing fundamental rights, right to privacy on
the one hand and right to food, shelter and employment on the other hand.”
“This is a good judgment,” said Parvesh Khanna, a
Delhi-based lawyer and one of the main plaintiffs in the case. “It’s okay for
the government to use my data but not the private companies,” he said.
Launched by the government in 2010, Aadhaar (“foundation”
in Hindi) is an ambitious program to provide every resident a unique 12-digit
number tied to fingerprints and eye scans. More than 1.2 billion people—nearly
the entire population—have been enrolled, according to the Unique
Identification Authority of India, which runs Aadhaar. That makes it the
world’s largest such program.
In 2012, Mr. Khanna and a retired justice petitioned the
Supreme Court to block the project as a violation of the right to privacy. Dozens
of other petitions followed; the court heard all the cases together.
The government argues that the ID system will allow the
country to leap into the digital age by providing people with a reliable means
of identification, which many currently lack. It has already curbed corruption
in the distribution of state fuel and food rations, the government says.
Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of India IT-services
titan Infosys Ltd. who dreamed up the program, puts the savings to the
government at $13 billion so far.
Aadhaar has been praised by the likes of Microsoft Corp.
co-founder Bill Gates for its pioneering use of technology, and analysts say it
has huge promise to bolster India’s burgeoning digital economy by making it
easier to set up bank accounts and get mobile connectivity for smartphones.
Wednesday’s ruling is “a big win for the government,”
Amit Malviya, head of information and technology for Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, wrote on Twitter . “It upholds the validity of
Aadhar,” says it “doesn’t infringe on Right to Privacy,” and “Quashes
surveillance theory.”
Critics have long assailed Aadhaar, calling it a case of
government overreach that could lead to snooping on citizens, and saying that
keeping such data in one location provides a tantalizing target for hackers.
Local media have reported instances of unauthorized access to the database,
such as login details being offered for sale and the use of hacked versions of
the Aadhaar enrollment software that bypasses security measures. The
government, however, says all biometric data remains safe, and that it cannot
be breached.
Another concern, some academics and activists say, is
that some of the country’s poorest citizens—such as the housebound and
sick—have been cut off from the public distribution of rations such as rice
because they haven’t been able to enroll in the program.
Wednesday’s judgment says such citizens shouldn’t be
denied benefits.
“Urban, richer people are able to survive,” said Reetika
Khera, an economist at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi who has studied
Aadhaar’s use in distributing welfare benefits in rural parts of the country.
“The ax has fallen on poor people.”
‘ Everyone must
realize, including critics of Aadhaar, that you can’t defy technology or ignore
it. ’ —Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
Ms. Khera and her colleagues say they have cataloged
dozens of cases in which people have died after having had their benefits cut
off because they lacked Aadhaar numbers.
The ruling comes as Indian policy makers debate whether
to follow a centrally controlled model like China’s, where homegrown startups
are sheltered and authorities can access citizens’ data, or one like in Western
countries, where private companies possess vast troves of information and
typically try to shield it from the government.
As prices of mobile data and smartphones fall—and as
millions of people become plugged into the digital world via Aadhaar—U.S. firms
ranging from Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to Facebook Inc. and Uber
Technologies Inc. are looking to dominate the world’s last great untapped
internet economy. Research firm eMarketer says India’s e-commerce market alone
will be worth $33 billion this year, three times greater than what it was in
2015.
—Rajesh Roy contributed to this article.
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