from citizens in the United States on the use of facial recognition in schools. In New York, public opposition was so strong that the state government ended up halting all use of biometric identifying technology in schools until at least July 2022.
San Francisco-based digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation says that biometric systems pose “extreme risks” to privacy and the security of personal data:
The problems are multiplied when biometrics databases are “multimodal,” allowing the collection and storage of several different biometrics in one database and combining them with traditional data points like name, address, social security number, gender, race, and date of birth. Further, geolocation tracking technologies built on top of large biometrics collections could enable constant surveillance.3
This is a problem highlighted in a Financial Times article about Aadhaar, India’s biometric ID system. It came into being in 2016 after the government passed the Aadhaar Act without any debate, discussion, or even the approval of Parliament. Aadhaar (Hindi for “foundation”) is a 12-digit unique identity number (UID) issued by the government after confirming a person’s biometric and demographic information. The largest system of its kind on the planet, Aadhaar required Indian citizens to submit their photograph, iris, and fingerprint scans in order to qualify for welfare benefits, compensation, scholarships, legal entitlements, and even nutrition programs. By 2021, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had issued 1.3 billion UIDs covering roughly 92 percent of the population.
The UIDAI was led by Indian tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani, the cofounder and nonexecutive chairman of Infosys, India’s second largest IT company. Lauded by Bill Gates as one of his so-called “heroes in the field” for having made the world’s “invisible people, visible,” Nilekani has in recent years been working with the World Bank to help other governments set up similar digital ID systems.4
Besides serving as a gateway to government services, Aadhaar also tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status, and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India. While the system has helped to speed and clean up India’s bureaucracy, it has also massively increased the Indian government’s surveillance powers and excluded over 100 million people from welfare programs as well as basic services, as the FT article notes:
The Indian media has reported several cases of cardless individuals starving to death because they could not access benefits to which they were entitled. “Aadhaar is deeply embedded in Indian life and works for most people most of the time. However, when it does not work, it most affects those who are already vulnerable,” the [2019 State of Aadhaar] report concluded.
Some critics go further, arguing Aadhaar has largely failed to fulfil its original promise of improving welfare and now acts as a tool for social exclusion and corporate influence. In Dissent on Aadhaar (2019), 15 academics, lawyers and technologists examined Aadhaar’s shortcomings, focusing on an almost Kafkaesque disparity between the “helplessness, frustration and vulnerability” of the individual and the omniscience and opacity of large bureaucracies.