We are anonymous, we are legion

AI for Social Good

praskrishna — 2017-03-15T01:22:42Z

AI in Asia event was organised by the Digital Asia Hub on March 6 and 7, 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. The event partners were Waseda University, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, NICT, NTT and the Japan Society of Information and Communication Research. Udbhav Tiwari attended the event.

Udbhav Tiwari presented a small (2 minute) lighting talk on the Autonomous Weapons Design section as a part of the 'Interactive Exercise on Next Steps for the Academic Community session', with the IEEE Ethically Aligned Design document as a guiding note. Read the executive summary here. See the workshop agenda here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ai-for-social-good

Essentials of building internet tools for inclusion

praskrishna — 2017-03-14T14:38:23Z

A talk jointly proposed by Chinmayi SK and Rohini Lakshané was selected for the Internet Freedom Festival held at Valencia, Spain from March 6 to 10, 2017. The talk held on March 6, 2017 was jointly organized by Random Hacks of Kindness, The Bachchao Project, and the Centre for Internet and Society.

For the full schedule of Internet Freedom Festival, click here. A manual titled Building Tech for Diversity and Inclusion 101 jointly authored by Chinmayi S.K., Rohini Lakshané and Willow Brugh was released during the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/essentials-of-building-internet-tools-for-inclusion

The 12-digit conundrum

praskrishna — 2017-03-14T13:50:05Z

Even as the Centre plans to link as many as 500 schemes to Aadhaar, concerns over data safety are rising. Richa Mishra reports.

The article by Richa Mishra was published in the Hindu Businessline on March 13, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The developments of last few weeks seem to have made real some of the worst fears about Aadhaar. In February, UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) filed a police complaint alleging attempts of unauthorised authentication and impersonation of data related to Aadhaar. Since then, each and every machinery within the government has been trying to convince otherwise, that Aadhaar database is safe and secure, and that the data is protected both by the best available advanced technology as well as by the stringent legal provisions in the Aadhaar Act.

Not everyone is convinced. Critics say, biometrics only make the citizen transparent to the State, it does not make the State transparent to citizens. “We warned the government six years ago, but they ignored us,” said Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of Bengaluru-based research organisation, Centre for Internet and Society. According to him, the legislation implementing Aadhaar has almost no data protection guarantees for citizens. He also believes that by opting for biometrics instead of smart cards the government is using surveillance technology instead of e-governance technology.

“Biometrics is remote, covert and non-consensual identification technology. It is totally inappropriate for authentication. This has only increased the fragility of Indian cyber security,” he stresses.

However, officials associated with UIDAI dismiss these arguments. Collecting biometrics does not pose any threat to the right to privacy because people have been giving their thumb impression for ages, they say. “The biometrics are encrypted at source and kept safe and secure. Unauthorised sharing and leakage of the data does not happen. Fears related to collection of biometrics are not justified,” an official at the helm of affairs said. He requested anonymity.

“However, as and when we find that some suspicious activity or misuse is happening, we will strike at the very beginning itself. UIDAI has full authentication regulation under the Aadhaar Act that has to be followed. It specifies in what manner authorities can use Aadhaar,” the official pointed out.

On the ground

Even as the debate over data security rages, the aam aadmi seem to be little perturbed about the alleged risks involved. For Padmini, who works as a domestic help in East Delhi and is the sole bread earner for her family of four, the Aadhaar card meant access to all government benefits.

“Koi farak nahi padta, kaun dekhta hai mera card. Mujhko LPG cylinder ka paisa bank mein mil jata hai,” (It doesn’t matter to me who sees my card. The subsidy for LPG gets transferred to my account) she says. “Baccho ke school admission mein bhi zaroorat pada,” (I needed it to get my children’s admission in school), she added. Sukh, a cab driver also uses it to get the LPG subsidy.

While everyone BusinessLine talked to were convinced that Aadhaar was not a citizenship card, the more aware ones saw it as a door that gave access to government schemes.

While they had a point, government officials are careful to make it clear that Aadhaar is not mandatory. But the popular perception increasingly points to the opposite view, especially after it emerged that Aadhaar might be made mandatory for children to receive midday meals at schools.

Another senior government official said, “Aadhaar is not mandatory under any welfare scheme of the government and no one is being deprived of a service or benefit for the want of Aadhaar…it’s required for availing a service/subsidy/benefit that accrues through the Consolidated Fund of India.” He added that those who do not have the 12-digit number would be provided with the facility to enrol by the Requiring Agency. “And till the time Aadhaar is assigned, alternative IDs would be allowed,” he said.

If a school which has to get Aadhaar enrolment done for its students puts the Aadhaar numbers of its students on its site and the same is used by someone, you can’t blame us, the official argues. Then, who is accountable?

Pushing for Aadhaar, the UIDAI officials cite the example of Kerala’s Department of General Education (DGE), which has integrated Aadhaar with the student databases and has thereby optimised the teacher-student ratio and identified the schools with excess teachers. In a single academic year, 3,892 excess teacher posts were identified.

“Due to this exercise, no new posts have been sanctioned for the last two years, resulting in notional savings of ₹540 crore per annum,” said a UIDAI official. After student enrolment in the state was linked to Aadhaar since 2012-2013, the head count of pupils have fallen by 5 lakh. Similar trends have been reported in Haryana. Critics have also pointed out the possible security risk in using AadhaarPay, the Andriod-based app. Merchants can download the app in their phone and install a fingerprint scanner linked to the phone. Customers with Aadhaar numbers can use their fingerprints (like the secret PIN in case of debit cards) to do a transaction. While doubts have been raised about the safety of fingerprint data, officials in the know blame the controversy on the “card lobbies.”

“Thirty crore Indians have no mobiles. They find it difficult to handle password, pin or card, this is where AadhaarPay will come handy,” the official added. “They don’t need a smart phone or feature phone. They don’t need a debit card.

“Today more than 112 crore people have the Aadhaar card. Approximately, 52.95 crore people have linked their Aadhaar numbers to their bank accounts. We already have a system of Aadhaar authentication in place,” the official added.

Government officials are at pain to point out the larger benefits of Aadhaar, including savings of more than ₹49,000 crore by plugging leakages in government schemes like PDS. Government plans to increase the number of welfare schemes linked to Aadhaar from 36 to over 500. While the intent is good, concerns remain.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/richa-mishra-hindu-businessline-march-13-2017-the-12-digit-conundrum

January 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-03-01T06:00:37Z

Welcome to the January 2017 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

We are pleased to bring you the Centre for Internet & Society's January newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPD) Act, which was passed in December 2016, seeks to give effect to the rights and obligations enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities, which India signed and ratified nearly a decade ago. Nirmita Narasimhan in a blog entry has summarized the key provisions of the Act relating to digital accessibility. The latest judgment in the matter of Super Cassettes v. MySpace is a landmark and progressive ruling, which strengthens the safe harbor immunity enjoyed by Internet intermediaries in India. CIS was one of the intervenors in the case, and has been duly acknowledged in the judgment. Meena Gayathri became the first South Indian Wikiwoman to complete 100 Wikidays challenge. The challenge required Wikipedians to create one new article per day for one hundred days in a row. Gayathri's contribution and passion towards Telugu language and culture have transcended into a "knowledge revolution". The Committee on Digital Payments constituted by the Ministry of Finance and chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, submitted its report on the "Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem" on December 09, 2016. The report was made public on December 27, and comments were sought from the general public. CIS submitted its comments. The comments were authored by Sumandro Chattopadhyay. ICANN sought community input on the Proposed ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy on 7 November 2016. In response to this CIS submitted its comments. The comments were authored by Padma Venkataraman, Rohini Lakshané, Sampada Nayak and Vidushi Marda. The eleven sessions selected for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) to be held at the IIIT Bangalore campus during March 3-5, 2017 has been announced. The conference is being organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at IIIT Bangalore and CIS.

CIS in the news

India’s Digital ID Rollout Collides With Rickety Reality (Gabriele Parussini; Wall Street Journal; January 13, 2017).
Millions of Indians move from cash to digital payments. But some ask whether it’s safe (Rama Lakshmi; Washington Post; January 14, 2017).
Sunil Abraham on Aadhaar's misuse during demonetisation (Economic Times; January 14, 2017)
The soon-to-be launched Aadhaar Pay will let you make purchases using your fingerprint (Indulekha Aravind; January 15, 2017).
Lost your phone? Here's how you can make your mobile theft-proof (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; January 16, 2017).
The Dangers Of Aadhaar-Based Payments That No One Is Talking About (Mayank Jain; Bloomberg; January 17, 2017).
Supreme Court issues notice to WhatsApp, Centre on data privacy (MJ Antony, Ayan Pramanik and Apurva Venkat; Business Standard; January 17, 2017).
Demonetisation: Cost Vs Benefit (NDTV; December 24, 2016). Sunil Abraham took part in the Big Fight programme aired by NDTV. The video was published on January 17, 2017.
For India’s complaints department, visit Facebook Live (Amy Kazmin; Financial Times; January 23, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles:

Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017).
Digital Native: The Dream of the Cyborg (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 8, 2017).
Digital transitions in the newsroom: How are Indian language papers adapting differently? (Zeenab Aneez; London School of Economics and Political Science; January 16, 2017).
Digital native: Back at it Again (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; January 22, 2017).

Jobs

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Blog Entry

Digital accessibility in the Rights of Persons With Disabilities Act 2016 (Nirmita Narasimhan; January 23, 2017).

Participation in Event

Workplace Solutions Champions Consultative Workshop (Organized by Enable India, January 21 - 22, 2017; Ecumenical Christian Centre, Bangalore). Nirmita Narasimhan attended the workshop.

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entry

Super Cassettes v. MySpace (Redux) (Anubha Sinha; January 16, 2017).

Event Organized

Seminar on Rethinking Copyright and Licensing for Digital Publishing Today (Organized by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, and CIS; New Delhi; January 23, 2017). Anubha Sinha attended the event.

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

WikiSangamotsavam 2016 (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Hyderabad Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Telugu Wikipedia Stall at Rajahmundry Book Fair (Manasa Rao; January 18, 2017).
Mini Workshop on Tools: Wikipedia Monthly Meetup, Hyderabad (Manasa Rao and Pavan Santhosh; January 18, 2017).
Meet Telugu Wikipedian Surampudi Meena Gayathri – the first South Indian Wikiwoman completing 100 Wikidays Challenge (Ting-Yi Chang; January 23, 2017).

Event Organized

Odia Wikipedia and Orientation Training Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K team; Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal; January 31, 2017).

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Participation in Event

CBGA - Consultation on Opening Up Access to Budget Data in India (Organized by CBGA; January 27, 2017; New Delhi). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a speaker.

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Privacy

Submission

Comments on the Report of the Committee on Digital Payments (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha; January 12, 2017).

Blog Entries

The Design & Technology behind India’s Surveillance Programmes (Udbhav Tiwari; January 20, 2017)
Workshop on ‘Privacy after Big Data’ (Amber Sinha; January 27, 2017).

Events Organized

Discussion on Ranking Digital Rights in India (India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi; January 7, 2017).
Rankathon on Digital Rights (CIS office, New Delhi; January 8, 2017).

Participation in Events

Global Governance Futures 2027 - Session 3 (Organized by Global Public Policy Institute and supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung; New Delhi; January 17, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay joined Ankhi Das (Facebook) and Arun Mohan Sukumar (Observer Research Foundation) to discuss the "data governance" scenarios developed by the GGF 2027 Fellows.
CPDP (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection) 2017 (Organized by Privacy International; Brussels, January 26, 2017). Amber Sinha participated as a panelist.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

New Media, personalisation and the role of algorithms (Amber Sinha; January 2, 2017).

Participation in Events

Training programme for Chairs, Convenor and Experts for International Standardization Work (Organized by National Institute of Training for Standardization, under the Bureau of India Standards; January 19 - 20, 2017; NOIDA). Udbhav Tiwari attended the training programme.
Seminar on Understanding Financial Technology, Cashless India, and Forced Digitalisation (Centre for Financial Accountability; New Delhi; January 24, 2017). Sumandro Chattapadhyay spoke on the emerging architecture of FinTech in India.

►Free Speech & Expression

Submission

Comments on the Proposed ICANN Community Anti-Harassment Policy (Padma Venkataraman, Rohini Lakshané, Sampada Nayak and Vidushi Marda; January 13, 2017).

Blog Entry

Social Media Monitoring (Amber Sinha; January 13, 2017).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Cashlessness Needs Connectivity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 4, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; January 5, 2017).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Event

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selected Sessions (Organized by Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy and CIS; IIIT, Bangalore; March 3 - 5, 2017). Eleven sessions have received 10 or more nominations.

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2017-newsletter

Fake News, Rumors & Online Content Regulation

praskrishna — 2017-02-28T02:46:13Z

Medianama and Mint organized #NAMApolicy open house on 'Fake News, Rumors & Online Content Regulation' on February 22, 2017 at the India Habitat Centre. Japreet Grewal and Amber Sinha attended the event.

The discussions broadly covered the impact of Fake News on democratic processes, Legal status of online content regulation in India & administrative challenges with Fake News, Responsibility and accountability of online platforms, while addressing challenges of identification of sources of Fake News, Potential legal and non-legal ways of addressing Fake News, etc.

Agenda

06:30 to 07:00 pm - Registration
07:00 to 07:10 pm - Introductory note
07:10 to 09:00 pm - Round-table discussion moderated by Nikhil Pahwa
09:00 pm onwards - Networking dinner

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/fake-news-rumors-online-content-regulation

Can the Judiciary Upturn the Lok Sabha Speaker’s Decision on Aadhaar?

amber — 2017-02-27T15:44:56Z

When ruling on the petition filed by Jairam Ramesh challenging passing the Aadhaar Act as a money Bill, the court has differing precedents to look at.

The article was published in the Wire on February 21, 2017.

In an earlier article, I had argued that the characterisation of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, as a money Bill by Sumitra Mahajan, speaker of the Lok Sabha, was erroneous. Specifically, I had argued that upon perusal of Article 110 (1) of the constitution, the Aadhaar Act does not satisfy the conditions required of a money Bill. For a legislation to be classified as a money Bill, it must comprise of ‘only’ provisions dealing with the following matters: (a) imposition, regulation and abolition of any tax, (b) borrowing or other financial obligations of the government of India, (c) custody, withdrawal from or payment into the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) or Contingent Fund of India, (d) appropriation of money out of CFI, (e) expenditure charged on the CFI or (f) receipt or custody or audit of money into CFI or public account of India; or (g) any matter incidental to any of the matters specified in sub-clauses (a) to (f).

Article 110 is modelled on Section 1(2) of the UK’s Parliament Act, 1911, which also defines money Bills as those only dealing with certain enumerated matters. The use of the word ‘only’ was brought up by Ghanshyam Singh Gupta during the constituent assembly debates. He pointed out that the use of the word ‘only’ limits the scope money Bills to only those legislations which did not deal with other matters. His amendment to delete the word ‘only’ was rejected, clearly establishing the intent of the framers of the constitution to keep the ambit of money Bills extremely narrow. G.V. Mavalankar, the first speaker of Lok Sabha, had stated that the word ‘only’ must not be construed so as to give an overly restrictive meaning. For instance, a Bill which deals with taxation could have provisions which deal with the administration of the tax. The finance minister, Arun Jaitley, referred to these words by Mavalankar, justifying the classification of the Aadhaar Act as a money Bill.

While the Aadhaar Bill does makes references to benefits, subsidies and services funded by the CFI, even a cursory reading of the Bill reveals its main objectives as creating a right to obtain a unique identification number and providing for a statutory apparatus to regulate the entire process. Any reasonable reading of the legislation would be hard pressed to view all provisions in the Aadhaar Act, aside from the one creating a charge on the CFI, as merely administrative provisions incidental to the creation such charge. The mere fact of establishing the Aadhaar number as the identification mechanism for benefits and subsidies funded by the CFI does not give it the character of a money Bill. The Bill merely speaks of facilitating access to unspecified subsidies and benefits rather than their creation and provision being the primary object of the legislation. Erskine May’s seminal textbook, Parliamentary Practice, is instructive in this respect and makes it clear that a legislation which simply makes a charge on the consolidated fund does not becomes a money Bill if otherwise its character is not that of one. Further, the subordinate regulations notified under the Aadhaar Act deal almost entirely with matters to do with enrolment, updation, authentication of the Aadhaar number and related matters such as data security regulations and sharing of information collected, rather than the provision of benefits or subsidies or disbursal of funds otherwise from the CFI.

However, in the context of the petition filed by former Union minister Jairam Ramesh challenging the passage of the law on Aadhaar as a money Bill, the more important question is whether the judiciary has a right to question the speaker’s decision in such a matter. If not, any other questions about whether the legislation is a money Bill will remain merely academic in nature.

Irregularity vs illegality

Article 110 (3) clearly states that with regard to the question whether a legislation is a money Bill or not, the decision of the speaker is final and binding. The question is whether such a clause completely excludes any judicial review. Further, Article 122 prohibits the courts from questioning the validity of any proceedings in parliament on the ground of any alleged irregularity of procedure.

During the arguments in the court, the attorney general questioned the locus standi of Ramesh. The petition has been made under Article 32 of the constitution and the government argued that no fundamental rights of Ramesh were violated. However, the court has asked Ramesh to make his submission and adjourned the hearing to July. The petition by Ramesh would hinge largely on the powers of the judiciary to question the decision of the speaker of the Lok Sabha.

The powers of privilege that parliamentarians enjoy are integral to the principle of separation of powers. The rationale behind parliamentary privilege is to prevent interference in the lawmakers’ powers to perform essential functions. The ability to speak and vote inside the legislature without the fear of punishment is certainly essential to the role of a lawmaker. However, the extent of this protection lies at the centre of this discussion. During the constituent assembly debates, H.V. Kamath and others had argued for a schedule to exhaustively codify the existing privileges. However, B.R. Ambedkar pointed to the difficulty of doing so and parliamentary privilege on the lines of the British parliamentary practice was retained in the constitution. In the last few decades, a judicial position has emerged that courts could exercise a limited degree of scrutiny over privileges, as they are primarily responsible for interpreting the constitution.

In the matter of Raja Ram Pal vs The Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, it had been clarified that proceedings of the legislature were immune from questioning by courts in the case of procedural irregularity but not in the case of illegality. In this case, the Supreme Court while dealing with Article 122 stated that it does not oust review by the judiciary in cases of “gross illegality, irrationality, violation of constitutional mandate, mala fides, non-compliance with rules of natural justice and perversity.”

In 1968, the speaker of the Punjab legislative assembly adjourned the proceedings for a period of two months following rowdy behaviour. Subsequently, an ordinance preventing such a suspension was promulgated and the legislature was summoned by the governor to consider some expedient financial matters. The speaker disagreed with the decision and after some confusion, the deputy speaker passed a few Bills as money Bills. While looking into the question of what was protected from judicial review, the court stated that the protection did not extend to breaches of mandatory provisions of the constitution, only to directory provisions. By that logic, if Article 110 (1) is seen as a mandatory provision, a breach of its provisions could lead to an interpretation that the Supreme Court may well question an erroneous decision by the speaker of the Lok Sabha to certify a legislation as a money Bill. The use of the word “shall” in Article 110 (1), the nature and design of the provision, its overriding impact on the other constitutional provisions granting the Rajya Sabha powers are ample evidence of its mandatory nature. Based on the above, Anup Surendranath has argued that the passage of the Aadhaar Act as a money Bill when it does not satisfy the constitutional conditions for it does amount to a gross illegality.

The judicial precedent in Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui vs State of Uttar Pradesh where the matter of the court’s power to question the decision of a speaker was considered, though, leans in the other direction. In 2012, the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayuktas (Amendment) Act, 2012 was passed as money Bill by the Uttar Pradesh state legislature. Subsequently, a writ petition was filed challenging its constitutional validity. A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court looked into the application of Article 212. It is the provision corresponding to Article 122, dealing with the power of the courts to inquire into the proceedings of the state legislature. The court held that Article 212 makes “it clear that the finality of the decision of the Speaker and the proceedings of the State Legislature being important privilege of the State Legislature, viz., freedom of speech, debate and proceedings are not to be inquired by the Courts.” Importantly, ‘proceedings of the legislature’ were deemed to include within its scope everything done in transacting parliamentary business, including the passage of the Bill. While the court did acknowledge the limitations of parliamentary privilege as established in the Raja Ram Pal case, it did not adequately take into account the reasoning in it.

The Aadhaar Act is a legislation which makes it mandatory of all residents to enrol for a biometric identification system in order to avail certain subsidies, benefits and services. It has huge potential risks for individual privacy and national security and has been the subject of an extremely high profile Public Interest Litigation. Its passage as a money Bill, without any oversight from the Rajya Sabha and an opportunity for substantial debate and discussion, is a fraud on the Constitution. Whether or not the court chooses to see it that way remains to be seen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-amber-sinha-february-21-2017-can-the-judiciary-upturn-the-lok-sabha-speakers-decision-on-aadhaar

India To Let Private Companies Access Citizens’ Biometric Data

praskrishna — 2017-02-27T15:09:16Z

India, home to the world’s largest national biometric registry, plans to begin sharing citizens’ data with the country’s private companies and startups.

The blog post by Joshua Kopstein was published by Vocativ on February 21, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The government-backed program, called “India Stack,” will allow the second most populous country on Earth to share nearly all of its 1.3 billion citizens’ fingerprints, iris scans, and more, potentially creating unprecedented security and privacy risks in the name of convenience and digital commerce.

India Stack will open up the country’s troves of biometric data to Indian software developers, health care providers, and any other business interested in using the government’s identification records in their apps and services. The Indian government hopes the move will spur innovation, jumpstarting its effort to create a centralized system of digital commerce where citizens can purchase goods, apply for health insurance, or even qualify for a loan using the biometric sensors on their smartphones.

Opponents, however, warn that the sharing scheme opens a Pandora’s box of security and privacy problems, dramatically increasing the likelihood of data breaches and abuse.

“It’s the worst time for privacy policy in the country,” Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, told the Wall Street Journal. “We are very caught up in technological exuberance. Techno-utopians are ruling the roost.”

The dangers aren’t just hypothetical. In 2015, an unprecedented breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management allowed hackers to steal the fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees. Researchers have found that stolen fingerprints can be used to commit fraud and identity theft, and even replicated and used to unlock smartphones and other personal devices. Worst of all, unlike passwords and social security numbers, biometric identifiers like fingerprints can never be changed, meaning that any breach is virtually guaranteed to have long-term consequences.

The India Stack program is the latest in several recent schemes to push the country toward a fully-digitized and cashless economy. As of December 2016, the Unique Identification Authority of India had registered more than 91% of the population into a centralized system called Aadhaar, which integrates with banks and allows citizens to complete transactions and access government services using their fingerprints. The country has also temporarily withdrawn its higher-denomination bank notes from circulation in an effort to bolster digital payment systems.

“While the efforts of the government are commendable, the efficacy of these programs in the absence of sufficient infrastructure for security raises various concerns,” the Centre For Internet and Society wrote in a paper outlining the privacy risks of India’s digital identity system. “Increased awareness among citizens and stronger security measures by the governments are necessary to combat the cogent threats to data privacy arising out of the increasing rate of cyberattacks.”

India’s program has already gone far beyond other countries’ biometric data collection schemes, which have mostly been limited to passports and border control. But law enforcement officials’ smaller, more piecemeal efforts to collect biometric information have also raised alarm over their potential for abuse. Thanks to the cooperation of 16 state DMVs, one in two Americans currently has their photo registered to a law enforcement face recognition database – regardless of whether they’ve been charged or even suspected of a crime. Local police in several U.S. states have also begun collecting iris scans and DNA swabs from people randomly stopped on the street, in some cases specifically targeting African American children.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/vocativ-joshua-kopstein-india-private-companies-citizens-biometric-data

T20 Mumbai 2017: Dialogue on the Emerging World Economy

praskrishna — 2017-02-27T15:04:05Z

Gateway House, Indian Council on Global Relations organized a dialogue on emerging world economy in Mumbai on 13 and 14 February 2017. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event.

The G20 is the premier multilateral platform for global economic and financial issues. It has a rotating presidency, and this year, Germany is the president of the G20. In that role, it is hosting a number of meetings with government officials (G20), business leaders (B20) and experts from think tanks (T20).

The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

Think-20 (T20) was first initiated by the Mexican presidency in 2012 and continued by subsequent G20 presidencies. It serves as an “ideas bank” for the G20 by organizing the analysis of global think tanks and high-level experts on relevant international economic issues. Think-20 recommendations are synthesized in policy briefs and presented to G20 working groups, ministerial committees and leaders summits to help the G20 deliver concrete policy measures.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy and German Development Institute have been appointed by the German government as coordinators for the think tank activities for the year. The institutes hosted the T20 kick-off meeting on December 1-2, 2016 in Berlin with experts from more than 80 countries., and are scheduled to host the first-ever T20 Africa conference on February 1-3, 2017 and eventually the T20 Summit on May 29-31, 2017.

Gateway House has hosted T20 meetings during the 2015 Turkish presidency and during the 2016 Chinese presidency of the G20. The meetings brought together experts from think tanks working international economic governance and foreign economic policy issues, business leaders and relevant government officials from India and the G20 countries to Mumbai. For Gateway House, the meetings were the outcome of the focus on geoeconomics and on-going research on international economic relations and global financial architecture.

At G20 2017, Germany has announced Resilience, Sustainability and Responsibility as its core vision. This will cover global issues such as financial market regulation, fin-tech, trade and investment, digitization, healthcare, migration and agriculture. This meeting in Mumbai is an important indicator of intellectual partnership between German and Indian think tanks and an opportunity to bring up new ideas and deliver concrete policy suggestions that can help Germany achieve its vision for G20 in 2017.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/t-20-mumbai-2017

Is Your Aadhar Biometrics Safe? Firms Accused Of Storing Biometrics And Using Them Illegally

praskrishna — 2017-02-27T01:56:28Z

Fears of Aadhar biometric security have been compounded as the government is sprinting towards the next phase of ‘cashless India’ and digitization

Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham have been quoted in this article published by Outlook on February 24, 2017.

The biggest fear regarding misuse of Aadhar biometrics and security loopholes are becoming real.

Three firms are being probed for attempting unauthorised authentication and impersonation by using stored Aadhaar biometrics, reported The Times of India.

The paper reported that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has lodged a criminal complaint with the cyber cell of Delhi Police, saying it is a clear violation of the law.

“The firms are Axis Bank, Suvidhaa Infoserve and eMudhra. They have been served a “notice for action“ under Aadhaar regulations”.

The firms have been accused of storing biometrics and using them illegally.

The fears of biometric security have been compounded as the government is sprinting towards the next phase of ‘cashless India’ and digitization. They are preparing to launch Aadhaar Pay, an initiative that will supersede the need to use credit cards, debit cards, smartphones and PINs to make payments or transfer money.

The proposed system of payments will use a person’s biometric data and fingerprints to make payments through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts.

Outlook’s Senior Associate Editor Arindam Mukherjee had in a clairvoyant article for the magazine raised the fears of biometrics being manipulated.

In the article, critics of Aadhaar and Aadhaar-based services raised the issue of privacy and security of biometric and personal data.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), recently tweeted, “As long as Aadhar-Enabled Payment Services encourages biometric authorisation of transactions, it is bound to be a security nightmare, with widespread fraud.” Would you tell a shopkeeper your debit card’s PIN? No. Then why share your fingerprint? A fingerprint, in this system, becomes a kind of unchangeable Aadhaar Enabled Payment System PIN, he asks.

According to the UIDAI, however, once biometric data is provided by the consumer while making Aadhaar-based payments, it gets encrypted and a merchant doesn’t get access to that data. The Aadhaar Act also prohibits any storing of biometric data in local devices.

And yet, there are many like CIS executive director Sunil Abraham who believe it is a mistake to use biometrics for authentication, especially when payments are concerned.

“Our concern with Aadhaar Pay is about the biometric component of the project,” says Abraham. “Biometrics is an identification technology. Unfortunately, it is being presented as an authentication technology. It is not a secure authentication technology as biometric data can be stolen easily. It is also irrevocable; once biometric data is stolen, it cannot be re-issued like a smart card.”

Then there is the problem of availability of fingerprints. In the case of many people from rural areas and the working class, fingerprints get affected due to the manual nature of their work. This makes it difficult for this target group of UIDAI to conduct transactions properly through Aadhaar Pay. “In Rajasthan, 30 per cent of the households are not even able to procure ration using fingerprints,” says Ramanathan.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-24-2017-is-your-aadhar-biometrics-safe-firms-accused-of-storing-biometrics-and-using-them-illegally

LinkedIn will help people in India train for semi-skilled jobs

praskrishna — 2017-02-24T01:51:20Z

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.

The article by John Ribeiro of IDG News Service was mirrored on CIO blog on February 21, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Microsoft has launched Project Sangam, a cloud service integrated with LinkedIn that will help train and generate employment for middle and low-skilled workers.

The professional network that was acquired by Microsoft in December has been generally associated with educated urban professionals but the company is now planning to extend its reach to semi-skilled people in India.

Having connected white-collared professionals around the world with the right job opportunities and training through LinkedIn Learning, the platform is now developing a new set of products that extends this service to low- and semi-skilled workers, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event on digital transformation in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Project Sangam, which is in private preview, is “the first project that is now the coming together of LinkedIn and Microsoft, where we are building this cloud service with deep integration with LinkedIn, so that we can start tackling that enormous challenge in front of us of how to provide every person in India the opportunity to skill themselves for the jobs that are going to be available.”

LinkedIn also plans a placement product for college graduates that will help students finds jobs regardless of whether they studied at top universities or not, Nadella added.

Microsoft announced earlier in the day its Skype Lite, a version of Skype that consumes less data. The company is also offering a ‘lite’ version of LinkedIn, reflecting the need for vendors to factor in low Internet bandwidth, usually running on low-cost and inadequately featured smartphones, when designing products for markets in countries like India.

LinkedIn Lite works on 2G links and is four times faster than the original LinkedIn client, Nadella said.

A large number of low-skilled and semi-skilled workers that Microsoft is targeting with its Sangam project still use feature phones, which will likely be a challenge as Microsoft tries to popularize the service.

Nadella has also backed a controversial Indian government sponsored project to use biometric data collected from over 1 billion people as an authentication mechanism for a variety of services offered by both the government and the private sector.

The project, called India Stack, aims to use a biometric system, called Aadhaar, to facilitate the digital exchange of information. Microsoft said on Tuesday that Skype Lite would support Aadhaar authentication, pointing out to potential uses of the technology such as for verifying the identity of a candidate for a video job interview. Project Sangam too offers authentication using Aadhaar.

Skype Lite is another example of how India Stack is driving the company’s innovation agenda, Nadella said in Mumbai. He announced in Bangalore on Monday that the company's end user products including Windows would be "great participants in the India Stack."

The Aadhaar project has been criticized by privacy activists for collecting biometric information such as the fingerprints and iris scans of people in a central database, which could be misused by both governments and hackers who might get access to the data.The government has been trying to extend the use of Aadhaar, initially designed for the distribution of government benefits and subsidies, to a variety of financial and other services.

"It is indeed shameful that Microsoft is supporting the centralized surveillance project of the Indian government which has dramatically increased the fragility of the Indian information society,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society.

"As Indian citizens we must realize that Microsoft will have our biometrics or our authentication factors that can be used to frame us in crimes or clean out our bank accounts," he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/idg-cio-february-21-2017-john-ribeiro-linkedin-will-help-people-in-india-train-for-semi-skilled-jobs

Privacy Gaps in India's Digital India Project

Anisha Gupta and Edited by Amber Sinha — 2017-02-21T01:55:59Z

This paper seeks to assess the privacy protections under 15 e-governance schemes: Soil Health Card, Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), Project Panchdeep, U-Dise, Electronic Health Records, NHRM Smart Card, MyGov, eDistricts, Mobile Seva, Digi Locker, eSign framework for Aadhaar, Passport Seva, PayGov, National Land Records Modernization Programme (NLRMP), and Aadhaar.

Introduction

The Central and State governments in India have been increasingly taking steps to fulfill the goal of a ‘Digital India’ by undertaking e-governance schemes. Numerous schemes have been introduced to digitize sectors such as agriculture, health, insurance, education, banking, police enforcement, etc. With the introduction of the e-Kranti program under the National e-Governance Plan, we have witnessed the introduction of forty four Mission Mode Projects.[1]

The digitization process is aimed at reducing the human handling of personal data and enhancing the decision making functions of the government. These schemes are postulated to make digital infrastructure available to every citizen, provide on demand governance and services and digital empowerment.[2]

In every scheme, personal information of citizens are collected in order to avail their welfare benefits. While the efforts of the government are commendable, the efficacy of these programs in the absence of sufficient infrastructure for security raises various concerns. Increased awareness among citizens and stronger security measures by the governments are necessary to combat the cogent threats to data privacy arising out of the increasing rate of cyberattacks.[3]

The schemes identified for the purpose of this paper have been introduced by the following government agencies:

S.No.	Scheme	Government Agency Involved
1	SOIL HEALTH CARD A scheme designed to provide complete soil information to farmers.	Department of Agriculture Corporation (DACNET)
2	CRIME AND CRIMINAL NETWORK TRACKING & SYSTEMS (CCTNS) A scheme that seeks to facilitate the functioning of the criminal system through online records, and has proposed data analysis for the purpose of trend setting, crime analysis, disaster and traffic management, etc.	National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)
3	U-Dise Serves as the official data repository for educational information.	Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)
4	PROJECT PANCHDEEP The use of Unified Information System for implementation of health insurance facilities under ESIC (Employee State Insurance Corporation).	Ministry of Labour & Employment
5	ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS A scheme to digitally record all health data of a citizen from birth to death.	Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW)
6	NHRM SMART CARD Under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) Scheme, every beneficiary family is issued a biometric enabled smart card for providing health insurance to persons covered under the scheme.	Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW)
7	MYGOV An online platform for government and citizen interaction.	The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY)
8	EDISTRICTS Common Service Centres are being established under the scheme to provide multiple services to the citizens at a district level.	DeITY
9	MOBILE SEVA A centralized mobile app, used to host various mobile applications.	DeITY
10	DIGILOCKER A scheme that provides a secure dedicated personal electronic space for storing the documents.	DeITY
11	eSIGN FRAMEWORK FOR AADHAAR eSign is an online electronic signature service to facilitate an Aadhaar holder to digitally sign a document.	Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology
12	PAYGOV A centralized platform for all citizen to government payments.	DeITY and NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML)
13	PASSPORT SEVA An online scheme for passport application and documentation.	Ministry of External Affairs
14	NATIONAL LAND RECORDS MODERNIZATION PROGRAM (NLRMP) The scheme seeks to modernize land records system through digitization and computerization of land records.	DeITY and NDML
15	AADHAAR A scheme for unique identification of citizens for the purpose of targeted delivery of welfare benefits.	Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

Read the full paper

[1]. Introduction to Digital India, available at http://www.governancenow.com/ news/regular-story/securing-digital-india

[2]. Id.

[3]. GN Bureau, Securing Digital India, Governance Now (June 11, 2016) available at http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/securing-digitalindia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-gaps-in-indias-digital-india-project

Big Data in Governance in India: Case Studies

2017-02-26T16:24:11Z

This research seeks to understand the most effective way of researching Big Data in the Global South. Towards this goal, the research planned for the development of a Global South big data Research Network that identifies the potential opportunities and harms of big data in the Global South and possible policy solutions and interventions.

This work has been made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The conclusions, opinions, or points of view expressed in the report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Introduction

The research was for a duration of 12 months and in form of an exploratory study which sought to understand the potential opportunity and harm of big data as well as to identify best practices and relevant policy recommendations. Each case study has been chosen based on the use of big data in the area and the opportunity that is present for policy recommendation and reform. Each case study will seek to answer a similar set of questions to allow for analysis across case studies.

What is Big Data

Big data has been ascribed a number of definitions and characteristics. Any study of big data must begin with first conceptualizing defining what big data is. Over the past few years, this term has been become a buzzword, used to refer to any number of characteristics of a dataset ranging from size to rate of accumulation to the technology in use.[1]

Many commentators have critiqued the term big data as a misnomer and misleading in its emphasis on size. We have done a survey of various definitions and understandings of big data and we document the significant ones below.

Computational Challenges

The condition of data sets being large and taxing the capacities of main memory, local disk, and remote disk have been seen as problems that big data solves. While this understanding of big data focusses only on one of its features—size, other characteristics posing a computational challenge to existing technologies have also been examined. The (US) National Institute of Science and Technology has defined big data as data which “exceed(s) the capacity or capability of current or conventional methods and systems.” [2]

These challenges are not merely a function of its size. Thomas Davenport provides a cohesive definition of big data in this context. According to him, big data is “data that is too big to fit on a single server, too unstructured to fit into a row-and-column database, or too continuously flowing to fit into a static data warehouse.” [3]

Data Characteristics

The most popular definition of big data was put forth in a report by Meta (now Gartner) in 2001, which looks at it in terms of the three 3V’s—volume[4], velocity and variety. It is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation.[5]

Aside from volume, velocity and variety, other defining characteristics of big data articulated by different commentators are— exhaustiveness,[6] granularity (fine grained and uniquely indexical),[7] scalability,[8] veracity,[9] value[10] and variability.[11] It is highly unlikely that any data-sets satisfy all of the above characteristics. Therefore, it is important to determine what permutation and combination of these gamut of attributes lead us to classifying something as big data.

Qualitative Attributes

Prof. Rob Kitchin has argued that big data is qualitatively different from traditional, small data. Small data has used sampling techniques for collection of data and has been limited in scope, temporality and size, and are “inflexible in their administration and generation.”[12]

In this respect there are two qualitative attributes of big data which distinguish them from traditional data. First, the ability of big data technologies to accommodate unstructured and diverse datasets which hitherto were of no use to data processors is a defining feature. This allows the inclusion of many new forms of data from new and data heavy sources such as social media and digital footprints. The second attribute is the relationality of big data.[13]

This relies on the presence of common fields across datasets which allow for conjoining of different databases. This attribute is usually a feature of not the size but the complexity of data enabling high degree of permutations and interactions within and across data sets.

Patterns and Inferences

Instead of focussing on the ontological attributes or computational challenges of big data, Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer Schöenberger define big data in terms of what it can achieve.[14]

They defined big data as the ability to harness information in novel ways to produce useful insights or goods and services of significant value. Building on this definition, Rohan Samarajiva has categorised big data into non-behavioral big data and behavioral big data. The latter leads to insights about human behavior.[15]

Samarajiva believes that transaction-generated data (commercial as well as non-commercial) in a networked infrastructure is what constitutes behavioral big data. Scope of Research The initial scope arrived at for this case-study on role of big data in governance in India focussed on the UID Project, the Digital India Programme and the Smart Cities Mission. Digital India is a programme launched by the Government of India to ensure that Government services are made available to citizens electronically by improving online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology.[16]

The Programme has nine components, two of which focus on e-governance schemes. Read More [PDF, 1948 Kb]

[1]. Thomas Davenport, Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the opportunities, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, 2014.

[2]. MIT Technology Review, The Big Data Conundrum: How to Define It?, available at https://www. technologyreview.com/s/519851/the-big-data-conundrum-how-to-define-it/

[3]. Supra note 1.

[4]. What constitutes as high volume remains an unresolved matter. Intel defined Big Data volumes are emerging in organizations generating a median of 300 terabytes of data a week.

[5]. http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/big-data/

[6]. Viktor Mayer Schöenberger and Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution that will transform how we live, work and think” John Murray, London, 2013.

[7]. Rob Kitchin, The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and their consequences, Sage, London, 2014.

[8]. Nathan Marz and James Warren, Big Data: Principles and best practices of scalable realtime data systems, Manning Publication, New York, 2015.

[9]. Bernard Marr, Big Data: the 5 Vs everyone should know, available at https://www.linkedin. com/pulse/20140306073407-64875646-big-data-the-5-vs-everyone-must-know.

[10]. Id.

[11]. Eileen McNulty, Understanding Big Data: the 7 Vs, available at http://dataconomy.com/sevenvs-big-data/.

[12]. Supra Note 7.

[13]. Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford, Critical questions for big data. Information, Communication and Society 15(5): 662–679, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281748849_Critical_questions_for_big_data_Provocations_for_a_cultural_technological_and_scholarly_ phenomenon

[14]. Supra Note 6.

[15]. Rohan Samarajiva, What is Big Data, available at http://lirneasia.net/2015/11/what-is-bigdata/.

[16]. http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/content/about-programme

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/big-data-in-governance-in-india-case-studies

No Genie At Your Fingertips

praskrishna — 2017-02-16T16:02:31Z

Aadhaar biometrics will now enable cashless shopping sans card and smartphone. A look at the hopes and fears.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in the Outlook on February 20, 2017. Pranesh Prakash and Sunil Abraham were quoted.

Soon, you will be able to pay for your groceries and other purchased goods by using just your fingerprints and biometric data. You won’t need debit or credit cards, smartphones or e-wallets. You won’t need to sign or even remember your PIN.

In a bid to increase digitisation and move to the next phase of ‘cashless India’, the government is preparing to launch Aadhaar Pay, an initiative that will supersede the need to use credit cards, debit cards, smartphones and PINs to make payments or transfer money. The proposed system of payments will use a person’s biometric data and fingerprints to make payments through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts.

The initiative, which has been running as a pilot project in fair price shops in Andhra Pradesh, is expected to be launched in a month’s time. According to officials of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the system has been getting a positive response in these trials and is ready for a nationwide launch.

In Aadhaar Pay, all a person needs to carry to a shop are his fingerprints as merchant establishments will authenticate his or her identity through fingerprints, which will give them access to a person’s Aadhaar data. The only essential requirement for this new mode of payments is that bank accounts have to be linked with the account-holder’s Aadhaar number.

Unlike the post-demonetisation limits imposed on ATM and bank account withdrawals, no limits are proposed to be put on Aadhaar Pay transactions as of now. The proposal is to leave the fixing of limits to the discretion of banks. However, the government hopes Aadhaar Pay will be used mostly for small-value transactions rather than large deals.

The system will work through an app in the merchant establishment’s smartphone—with a fingerprint scanner device—eliminating the requirement of a Point of Sale (POS) terminal, which is required for credit card and debit card transactions. The scanner will be priced at around Rs 2,000, considerably cheaper than POS terminals that cost Rs 8,000-10,000.

Aadhaar Pay is the next step of the government’s successful run of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS), under which transactions are made through ‘banking correspondents’, mostly in rural areas. These transactions are done through POS machines and micro-ATMs. Like Aadhaar Pay, AEPS disburses money without a signature or a debit or credit card, and without the need to visit a bank branch. But unlike AEPS, which works through banking correspondents, Aadhaar Pay will be available through merchant establishments much the same way as debit or credit cards work.

The biggest task before the government to ensure the success of Aadhaar Pay is to develop a network of merchant establishments that will accept Aadhaar Pay just the way they accept credit or debit cards or e-wallet payments like Paytm. To do this, the government said in this year’s budget that banks would be encouraged to put 20 lakh Aadhaar Pay access machines across the country. “We have asked every bank to select 35 merchants for this. These merchants will have a smartphone and a biometric device attachment to carry out Aadhaar Pay transactions,” UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey tells Outlook.

This won’t be easy. Even in case of debit or credit cards, the biggest limiting factor is the relatively small number of POS terminals that accept them. According to data from the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), there are only 14 lakh POS terminals in India, which has over 3.5-4 crore merchant establishments and 80 crore cards (77 crore debit cards and three crore credit cards). The bulk of these terminals are in tier I and tier II cities and almost none in tier III and IV towns. To improve the situation, the government is already working towards bringing in 10 lakh new terminals by March, most of which will be put in tier III and tier IV towns, bringing them deeper within the ambit of the digitised, cashless economy.

Though a starting target of 20 lakh terminals for Aadhaar Pay may seem quite ambitious, according to the latest data, 111.51 crore adults have already obtained their Aadhaar numbers and 50 crore bank accounts (of a total 110 crore savings accounts in the country) of 40 crore people have been linked to Aadhaar and, according to UIDAI, nearly two crore people are linking their bank accounts with Aadhaar every month, brightening up the prospects of Aadhaar Pay. A majority of these numbers are from rural areas and smaller cities.

The government and UIDAI aim to roll out Aadhaar Pay primarily in rural areas and tier III and tier IV cities to begin with, as these areas do not have proper debit or credit card coverage and the people living there are not big users of plastic cards or smartphones. “We need to provide a solution for every segment of the population,” says Pandey. “We have to take care of the people who cannot use smartphones or other mobile phones and debit or credit cards, and those who cannot remember their PIN for authentication. The only tool with them is their fingerprint. Approximately 30 crore people are not comfortable with cards or phone. We had to get them into the mode of digital payments.”

Not surprisingly, critics of Aadhaar and Aadhaar-based services have attacked Aadhaar Pay and AEPS on issues of privacy and security of biometric and personal data. Pranesh Prakash, policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), recently tweeted, “As long as AEPS encourages biometric authorisation of transactions, it is bound to be a security nightmare, with widespread fraud.” Would you tell a shopkeeper your debit card’s PIN? No. Then why share your fingerprint? A fingerprint, in this system, becomes a kind of unchangeable PIN, he asks.

Pointing out a possible danger, Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher who has been following Aadhaar since its inception, says, “In many payments, biometric data is authenticated and then it remains in the system where there are leakages. Intermediaries then have access to the data, which is thus made insecure.”

According to the UIDAI, however, once biometric data is provided by the consumer while making Aadhaar-based payments, it gets encrypted and a merchant doesn’t get access to that data. The Aadhaar Act also prohibits any storing of biometric data in local devices. And yet, there are many like CIS executive director Sunil Abraham who believe it is a mistake to use biometrics for authentication, especially when payments are concerned. “Our concern with Aadhaar Pay is about the biometric component of the project,” says Abraham. “Biometrics is an identification technology. Unfortunately, it is being presented as an authentication technology. It is not a secure authentication technology as biometric data can be stolen easily. It is also irrevocable; once biometric data is stolen, it cannot be re-issued like a smart card.”

Then there is the problem of availability of fingerprints. In the case of many people from rural areas and the working class, fingerprints get affected due to the manual nature of their work. This makes it difficult for this target group of UIDAI to conduct transactions properly through Aadhaar Pay. “In Rajasthan, 30 per cent of the households are not even able to procure ration using fingerprints,” says Ramanathan.

The launch of Aadhar Pay at this time becomes more challenging as there has been a decline in digital payments this January. According to RBI data, digital payments, including transactions made by using credit cards, debit cards, electronic fund transfers, digital wallets and mobile banking transactions, were 10.2 per cent lower by volume and 7 per cent lower by value in January 2017 as compared to December 2016. Also, digital transactions fell from 1,027.7 million (worth Rs 105.4 lakh crore) to 922.9 million (worth Rs 98 lakh crore). This could get worse as the RBI raised the cash withdrawal limits from Rs 24,000 to Rs 50,000 from February 20 and aims to remove all limits by mid-March.

Within digital transactions, debit and credit transactions at POS terminals declined 18.6 per cent month-on-month in January, while mobile banking transactions declined by 7.6 per cent, showing that people still prefer to deal in cash. According to NPCI data, however, IMPS transactions rose by 18 per cent in January and UPI-based transactions went up from 2 million transactions (worth Rs 700 crore) in December to 4.2 million transactions (worth Rs 1,666 crore) in January.

Clearly, considering India’s demography and its problems, when it comes to the security of personal and biometric data, the government and the UIDAI have many issues to clear before Aadhaar Pay can achieve any success. Moreover, there are over 100 crore mobile phones in India today, with even the lowest strata of the population having access to one. Yet mobile-based payments and m-wallets are yet to hit that critical mass. To make Aadhaar Pay a bigger success than that could be a gigantic task.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-arindam-mukherjee-february-20-2017-no-genie-at-your-fingertips

Digital illusions

praskrishna — 2017-02-16T14:53:39Z

The Watal Committee’s report presents the government with an impossible road map to a cashless nirvana.

The article by V. Sridhar was published in Frontline, Print edition: March 3, 2017

MORE than two months after demonetising an overwhelming proportion of the currency in circulation, the Narendra Modi government now appears to have settled on its key objective for setting out on the unprecedented economic adventure. After shifting the goalposts several times—initially it was a means of combating terrorism and fake currency, later it was a war on black money and still later it was to forcibly march the country towards a “cashless” future, which was then modified to a more reasonable “less cash” society—the government now ostensibly has the road map to undertake the hazardous journey to an age when cash will no longer be king.

There is no better and time-tested means for a government bent on carrying out its whims than to appoint a committee headed by a former bureaucrat to give it the report that would justify what it has already decided to do. In August 2016, months before demonetisation, it constituted the Committee on Digital Payments, chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Adviser, NITI Aayog, and former Secretary, Ministry of Finance. The committee dutifully submitted its report in double quick time on December 9, which was approved by the Finance Ministry on December 27.

The haste with which the committee has gone about its business is evident throughout the report. The committee’s slant is also evident in its approach, especially the reverence with which it welcomes the demonetisation move, even though it was commissioned before November 8, and its recourse to suspect data from private industry and multinational companies even when better quality data were available from official sources such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The report’s lack of rigour, especially in tackling the substantive issues pertaining to monetary policy, was also hindered by the fact that not a single economist of worth, not even a specialist in monetary economics, was present in the committee.

Reckless rush

However, to blame the committee alone would be futile. The government, by pursuing an ambitious and reckless push towards “less cash” before setting out a regulatory framework governing digital payments, in effect, placed the cart before the horse.

The report reveals not just the haste with which the Watal Committee has pursued its mission with evangelical zeal but its utter lack of respect for conceptual issues. Nowhere is this more evident than in its recommendation that the regulatory responsibilities for governing the digital payments system be distanced from the RBI. This not only is out of tune with global practices, but it reveals the committee’s sheer inability to understand the fact that although payments account for just a small fraction of what a banking system does, they impinge on modern banking and monetary policy in crucial ways.

In a modern economy, currency creation by the central bank through fiat money is not the only means by which money is created. Deposits with banks, for instance, which provide the base for credit creation, are a means by which banks “create” money. From this perspective, a mobile wallet service provider also acts like a bank; even the users’ monies are held only for a brief period until transactions happen.

Thus, it appears fit and proper that such services are also governed by the central bank. However, the Watal Committee has recommended that they be supervised by an entity that has a measure of independence from the RBI. This suggestion is dangerous because such entities can potentially pose a systemic risk, which is a key responsibility of a central bank. There is also the risk of regulatory capture of the suggested body, the Payments Regulatory Board (PRB), if sections of the payments industry exercise their newly acquired clout.

The committee’s enthusiastic acceptance of the “go cashless” mantra is also evident in the data it has sourced. A good example of how it cherry-picked data is its use of a highly dubious (or at the very least, utterly misplaced) dataset to make the point that India is far too dependent on cash. It points to data sourced from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other sources to claim that India’s cash-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is 12.04 per cent, much higher than countries such as Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

However, this much-abused dataset, quoted widely by advocates of demonetisation, is an inaccurate measure because it only captures the extent of physical currency in circulation and ignores short-term deposits, which are defined as “broad money”. Logically, these deposits must be included because they are virtually on call by depositors and are, therefore, liquid. Secondly, the fact that such deposits have been increasing as a proportion of the currency in circulation, aided by the spread of banking in India, makes them particularly relevant in the Indian context. The committee, in its bid to justify sending the nation on a cashless path, proceeds to evaluate the “high” costs that cash imposes on the Indian economy. It quotes from McKinsey and Visa, both of which may have a vested interest in India’s mission to go cashless, to drive home the point that going digital would result in huge savings. It quotes McKinsey to claim that “transitioning to an electronic platform for government payments itself could save approximately Rs.100,000 crore annually, with the cost of the transition being estimated at Rs.60,000-70,000 crore” and a Visa report that claims a total investment of Rs.60,000 crore over five years towards creating a digital payments ecosystem could reduce the country’s cost of cash from 1.7 per cent of the GDP to 1.3 per cent.

Even while pushing the benefits of going cashless, the committee does admit that the transition to digital payments “cannot be agnostic to the actual costs incurred by the end customers, the reasons for preferring cash, and the factors inhibiting the uptake of existent channels of digital payments”.

A large part of the Indian economy is its “black” counterpart, estimated at about 60 per cent of the legitimate part of India’s national income. Since a significant portion of the currency in circulation caters to the demand from the shadow economy, apart from the huge segment that is engaged in legitimate but informal economic activity, these estimates miss a significant chunk of the economy and its need for cash. Conceptually, to that extent, they significantly overstate the extent of cash relative to real GDP, including the portion missing from official data.

The naive assumption that digitalised financial transactions are scale-neutral and costless, painless and efficient lies at the heart of the Watal Committee’s report. This has obvious implications for India’s large informal economy, which the Modi government is pushing, under pain of death, towards formality through digital channels. For instance, basic data on the usage of debit cards show how skewed the demand for cards is in India. In August 2016, cash withdrawals at ATMs accounted for 92.28 per cent of the value of all debit card transactions in the country. Thus, less than 8 per cent of the total value was made at point-of-sale (PoS) terminals.

This statistic is a clear indication of a divide that mirrors the income and consumption divide in Indian society. When banks issue cards (debit, credit or any other), card payment system companies such as Mastercard and Visa provide an interface with the customer for which the issuer pays a fee, which is, in any case, recovered from customers. According to a recent study by Visa, the penetration of PoS terminals has slowed down significantly since 2012, when the RBI set limits on what the card companies could charge as merchant discount rate (MDR), the amount charged from sellers. This reveals that card companies may have been slowing down penetration in order to bargain for a bigger slice of the transaction fee. Although the rates apply not just to card-based purchases but to cash withdrawals too (and have been waived or lowered in the wake of demonetisation on a purely temporary basis), there is no guarantee that they will not increase once the situation returns to normal. This is aggravated by the fact that the government may have little or no control, or the will, to prevent banks and card issuers from charging higher rates later. This has been demonstrated in the past with, for example, ATM-based withdrawals, for which customers have to pay a fee after a minimum number of transactions.

The flat fee (as a percentage) is regressive, especially because it punishes smaller sellers. It is in this sense that finance, digital or otherwise, is never scale-neutral. The fact that the immediate victims of demonetisation are small-scale producers and retailers implies that the balance has been tilted against them and in favour of larger producers and retailers after November 8. By skewing the field against small and tiny enterprises, demonetisation has been the vehicle for a massive and unprecedented transfer of incomes and wealth from the poor to the rich.

There is also a fundamental asymmetry in the use of technology in the financial services industry. ATMs, which have been around for decades, were originally touted as a technology that increases efficiency in the use of cash; you only need to withdraw as much as you need, so there is no motive to hoard cash. But that was not the motive for introducing ATMs; the real reason was that they enabled banks to reduce their workforce to cut costs. As ATMs became more ubiquitous, banks started moving from cost cutting to profit-seeking by levying a fee for every transaction above a minimum threshold. In effect, the gains from technology are boosting the profitability of banks while the wider systemic benefits made possible by the same technology have been sacrificed, as the imposition of fees above a minimum threshold actually drives people to hoard cash.

A study by Visa in October 2016, titled Accelerating The Growth of Digital Payments in India: A Five-Year Outlook, reveals that a one percentage point reduction in cash in circulation as percentage of GDP would require digital transactions of personal consumption expenditure to multiply ninefold. In other words, Visa suggested that digital transactions as a percentage of personal consumption expenditure would need to increase from 4 per cent to 36 per cent if the cash-GDP ratio has to reduce from 11 per cent to 10 per cent.

Security concerns

Apart from these weighty economic issues, which are central to the move towards digital financial transactions, there are other critically important issues that the committee has either ignored or swept under the carpet. The question of privacy and security was a central issue at a recent conference on digital payments organised by HasGeek, a platform for software developers, in Bengaluru. Several experts, including some from the payments industry, pointed out the serious security and privacy issues that are being ignored in the rush to go digital. For example, an expert on data security warned that the mindless rush to mobile-based transactions was especially scary because most Android phones are vulnerable because they leak data. In fact, he noted that it may be safer for Android mobile users to perform digital transactions using desktop browsers.

But what is more scary is the manner in which Aadhaar is being touted by the committee as the magic wand by which the digital era can be ushered in quickly. It recommends that mobile number-based and Aadhaar-based “fully interoperable payments” be prioritised within 60 days and that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) be responsible for ensuring this.

There has been significant resistance to the idea of an Aadhaar-enabled service for digital transactions, primarily because of security and privacy concerns. Entities such as the Centre for Internet and Society have warned against linking Aadhaar to the financial inclusion project because it violates the Supreme Court stricture against making Aadhaar mandatory. Kiran Jonnalagadda of HasGeek pointed out that the Aadhaar system offered only “single factor authorisation”. He said in a recent tweet that Aadhaar involved only a permanent login ID without “a changeable password”, which, from a systemic point of view, made it open to abuse.

Longstanding critics of the Aadhaar project have pointed out the launch of such a countrywide programme at a time when a regulatory regime is not even in place, and when India does not have privacy protection laws, is dangerously misplaced. They have pointed to the fact that unlike in the case of a debit or credit card, which can be replaced when its integrity has been compromised, the theft of biometric characteristics of a user implies that they are compromised forever. This is not science fiction but a very real possibility as has been demonstrated across the world.

There are also serious worries that the high failure rate of biometric verification would hurt the poor, supposedly the main target group of the Aadhaar project; the large-scale denial of services such as access to the public distribution system has already been documented across the country. Extending a failed system to real-time financial transactions, thus, appears to be dangerously misplaced. The fundamental issue is this: can a digital mode of payment effectively provide the same level of trust between the transacting parties that is central to a cash-based transaction? The answer to that depends critically on whether the digital mode provides the same level of convenience, cost, predictability and certainty.

The Watal Committee has produced a report that the political masters sought. Its lack of appreciation of the economic issues underpinning financial transactions and of the wider economic processes in the Indian economy are obvious. Effectively, it has delivered what the Modi government asked for—an impossible road map to a cashless nirvana for a people already suffering the effects of demonetisation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/frontline-v-sridhar-march-3-2017-digital-illusions

India's Aadhaar with biometric details of its billion citizens is making experts uncomfortable

praskrishna — 2017-02-14T14:57:33Z

"Indians in general have yet to understand the meaning and essence of privacy," says Member of Parliament, Tathagata Satpathy.

The blog post was published by Mashable India on February 14, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

But on Feb. 3, privacy was the hot topic of debate among many in India, thanks to a tweet that showed random people being identified on the street via Aadhaar, India's ubiquitous database that has biometric information of more than a billion Indians.

That's how India Stack, the infrastructure built by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), welcomed OnGrid, a privately owned company that is going to tap on the world's largest biometrics system, conjuring images of Minority Report style surveillance.

But how did India get here?

Aadhaar's foundation

Not long ago, there were more people in India without a birth or school certificate than those with one (PDF). They had no means to prove their identity. This also contributed to what is more popularly known as “leakage” in the government subsidy fundings. The funds weren’t reaching the right people, in some instances, and much of it was being siphoned off by middlemen.

Nearly a decade ago, the government began scrambling for ways to tackle these issues. Could technology come to the rescue? The government dialled techies, people like Nandan Nilekani, a founder of India's mammoth IT firm Infosys, for help.

In 2008, they formulated Aadhaar, an audacious project "destined" to change the prospects of Indians. It was similar to Social Security number that US residents are assigned, but its implications were further reaching.

At the time, the government said it will primarily use this optional program to help the poor who are in need of services such as grocery and other household items at subsidized rates.

Eight years later, Aadhar, which stores identity information such as a photo, name, address, fingerprints and iris scans of its citizens and also assigns them with a unique 12-digit number, has become the world's largest biometrics based identity system.

According to the Indian government, over 1.11 billion people of the country's roughly 1.3 billion citizens have enrolled themselves in the biometrics system. About 99 percent of all adults in India have an Aadhaar card, it said last month.

Today, the significance of Aadhaar, which on paper remains an optional program, is undeniable in the country. The government says Aadhaar has already saved it as much as $5 billion.

But that's not it.

There's a bit of Aadhaar in everyone's life

Aadhaar (Hindi for foundation) has long moved beyond helping the poor. The UPI (Unified Payment Interface), another project by the Indian government that uses Aadhaar, is helping the country's much unbanked population to avail financial services for the first time. Nilekani calls it a "WhatsApp moment" in the Indian financial sector.

In December last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched BHIM, a UPI-based payments app that aims to get millions of Indians to do online money transactions for the first time, irrespective of which bank they had their accounts with. With BHIM, transferring money is as simple as sending a text message. People can also scan QR codes and pay merchants for their purchases.

"This app is destined to replace all cash transactions," Modi said at the launch event. "BHIM app will revolutionize India and force people worldwide to take notice," he added.

The next phase, called Aadhaar Enabled Payments System will do away with smartphones. People will be able to make payments by swiping their finger on special terminals equipped with fingerprint sensors rather than swiping cards.

Last year, the government said people could store their driver license documents in an app called DigiLocker, should they want to be relieved from the burden of carrying paper documents. DigiLocker is a digital cloud service that any citizen in India can avail using their Aadhaar information.

The government also plans to hand out "health cards" to senior citizens, mapped to their Aadhaar number, which will store their medical records, which doctors will be able to access.

“Aadhaar is an instrument for good governance. Aadhaar is the mode to reach the poor without the middlemen,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s IT minister said in a press conference last year.

But despite all the ways Aadhaar is making meaningful impact in millions of lives, some people are very skeptical about it. And for them, the scale at which Aadhaar operates now is only making things worse.

A security nightmare

There have been multiple reports suggesting bogus and fake entries in Aadhaar database. Instances of animals such as dogs and cows having their own Aadhaar identification numbers have been widely reported. In one instance, even Hindu god Hanuman was found to have an Aadhaar card.

The problem, it appears, is Aadhaar database has never been verified or audited, according to multiple security experts, privacy advocates, lawyers, and politicians who spoke to Mashable India this month.

“There are two fundamental flaws in Aadhaar: it is poorly designed, and it is being poorly verified,” Member of Parliament and privacy advocate, Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Mashable India. “Aadhaar isn’t foolproof, and this has resulted in fake data get into the system. This in turn opens new gateways for money launderers,” he added.

Another issue with Aadhaar is, Chandrasekhar explains, there is no firm legislation to safeguard the privacy and rights of the billion people who have enrolled into the system. There’s little a person whose Aadhaar data has been compromised could do. “Citizens who have voluntarily given their data to Aadhaar authority, as of result of this, are at risk,” he added.

Rahul Narayan, a lawyer who is counselling several petitioners challenging the Aadhaar project, echoed similar sentiments. “There’s no concrete regulation in place,” he told Mashable India. “The scope for abuses in Aadhaar is very vast,” he added.

But regulation — or its lack thereof — is only one of the many challenges, experts say. Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore-based research organisation the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), says the security concerns around Aadhaar are alarming.

“Aadhaar is remote, covert, and non-consensual,” he told Mashable India, adding the existence of a central database of any kind, but especially in the context of the Aadhaar, and at the scale it is working is appalling.

Abraham said fingerprint and iris data of a person can be stolen with little effort — a “gummy bear” which sells for a few cents, can store one’s fingerprint, while a high resolution camera can capture one’s iris data.

Aadhaar doesn’t use basic principles of cryptography, and much of its security is not known.

Aadhaar is also irrevocable, which strands a person, whose data has been compromised, with no choice but to get on with life, Abraham said, adding that these vulnerabilities could have been averted had the government chosen smart cards instead of biometrics.

On top of this, he added, that Aadhaar doesn’t use basic principles of cryptography, and much of the security defences it uses are not known.

Had the government open sourced Aadhaar code to the public (a common practice in the tech community), security analysts could have evaluated the strengths of Aadhaar. But this too isn’t happening.

At CIS, Sunil and his colleagues have written over half-a-dozen open letters to the UIDAI (the authority that governs Aadhaar project) raising questions and pointing holes in the system. But much of their feedback has not returned any response, Abraham told Mashable India.

India Stack: A goldmine for everyone

As part of its push to make Aadhaar more useful, the UIDAI created what is called India Stack, an infrastructure through which government bodies as well as private entities could leverage Aadhaar's database of individual identities. This is what sparked the initial debate about privacy when India Stack tweeted the controversial photo.

Speaking to Mashable India, Piyush Peshwani, a founder of OnGrid, however dismissed the concerns, clarifying that the picture was for representation purposes only. He said OnGrid is building a trust platform, through which it aims to make it easier for recruiters to do background check on their potential employees after getting their consent.

India Stack and OnGrid have since taken down the picture from their Twitter accounts. "OnGrid, much like other 200 companies working with UIDAI, can only retrieve information of users after receiving their prior consent," he said.

The lack of information from the UIDAI and India Stack is becoming a real challenge for citizens, many feel. There also appears to be a conflict of interest between the privately held companies and those who helped design the framework of Aadhaar.

As Rohin Dharmakumar, a Bangalore-based journalist pointed out, Peshwani was part of the core team member of Aadhaar project. A lawyer, who requested to be not identified, told Mashable India that there is a chance that these people could be familiar with Aadhaar’s roadmap and use the information for business advantage, to say the least.

Most people Mashable India spoke to are questioning the way these third-party companies are handling Aadhaar data. There is no regulation in place to prevent these companies from storing people’s data or even creating a parallel database of their own — a view echoed by Abraham, Narayan, and Chandrasekhar.

Not mandatory only on paper

But for many, the biggest concern with Aadhaar remains just how aggressively it is being implemented into various systems. For instance, in the past one month alone, students in most Indians states who want to apply for NEET, a national level medical entrance test, were told by the education board CBSE that they will have to provide their Aadhaar number.

A few months ago, Aadhaar was also made mandatory for students who wanted to appear in JEE, an all India common engineering entrance examination conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in the country.

The apex Supreme Court of India recently asked the central government to register the phone number of all mobile subscribers in India (there are about one billion of those in India) to their respective Aadhaar cards. Telecom carriers are already enabling new connections to get activated by verifying users with Aadhaar database.

A prominent journalist who focuses on privacy and laws in India questioned the motive. “When they kickstarted UIDAI, people were told that this an optional biometrics system. But since then the government has been rather tight-lipped on why it is aggressively pushing Aadhaar into so many areas,” he told Mashable India, requesting not to be identified.

"It is especially difficult to explain why privacy is necessary for a society to advance when taken in the context of Aadhaar."

“It is especially difficult to explain why privacy is necessary for a society to advance when taken in the context of Aadhaar. The Aadhaar card is being offered to people in need, especially the poor, by making them believe that services and subsidies provided by the government will be held back from them unless they register,” Satpathy told Mashable India.

The central government said last week Aadhaar number would be mandatory for availing food grains through the Public Distribution System under the National Food Security Act. In October last year, the government made Aadhaar mandatory for those who wanted to avail cooking gas at subsidized prices.

“No matter how many laws are made about not making Aadhaar mandatory, ultimately it depends on the last mile person who is offering any service to inform citizens about their rights,” Satpathy added.

“These last-mile service providers are companies who would benefit from collecting and bartering big data for profit. They would be least interested to inform citizens about their rights and about the not mandatory status of Aadhaar.

“As Aadhaar percolates more and is used by more government and private services, the citizen will start assuming it's a part of their life. This card is already being misunderstood as if it is essential like a passport,” he added.

“My worry is that this data will be used by government for mass surveillance, ethnic cleansing and other insidious purposes,” Satpathy said. “Once you have information about every citizen, the powerful will not refrain from misusing it and for retention of power. The use of big data for psycho-profiling is not unknown to the world anymore.”

Mashable India reached out to UIDAI on Feb. 8 for comment on the privacy and security concerns made in this report. At the time of publication, the authority hadn't responded to our queries.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mashable-india-february-14-2017-india-aadhaar-uidai-privacy-security-debate