India To Issue Over a Billion Biometric ID Cards 167
angrytuna writes "The Unique Identification Authority is a new state department in India charged with assigning every living Indian an exclusive number and biometric ID card. The program is designed to alleviate problems with the 20 current types of proof of identity currently available. These problems range from difficulties for the very poor in obtaining state handouts, corruption, illegal immigration, and terrorism issues. Issuing the cards may be difficult, however, as less than 7% of the population is registered for income tax, and voter lists are thought to be inaccurate, partly due to corruption. The government has said the first cards will be issued in 18 months."
Awesome! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Illegal Immigration? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, there is a big world out there outside the US.
America has over 50 types (Score:2, Insightful)
America has over 50 types of commonly used ID, and that's not even counting the several types of ID cards and drivers licenses that some states have, nor does it count military IDs, civilian-government-employee IDs, university-issued IDs, passports, and more.
Re:Sick priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaving aside the technicalities of the project for a moment, these are strange priorities. India is not the only country to have lots of starving people and homeless, but instead of feeding them or building homes, they are to piss billions of Dollars giving them ID cards for the New World Order to track them.
I think they aim for this move to benefit the poor as well. When they have an ID number it's going to be easier for them to use their rights, such as voting or obtaining state handouts.
re-identification and stolen identities (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the corruption they have now, what makes them think corruption won't continue?
Stealing someones biometric data will mean an increasing arms race for technology to identify someone. It will eventually fail as corrupt agencies and criminals have the same methods to read biometry data and create the id cards. As a way to slow this down - do not give the biometric data to the person, explained thus:
Instead, people should be issued replaceable, hard to fake credentials (ID cards) - that do NOT have biometric readings on them, rather just a long random number. These would be easy to read - and the random number identifies the holder.
Creation and issuing of credentials would be done only based on government-run biometric scans. The identifying agency keeps the biometric data secret at the time of issue or re-issue, and links the biometric data to the replaceable credentials/random number.
This way if an ID is stolen or in dispute, the person comes in, gets scanned again and a new credential/card/random number is issued and the old one is cancelled.
This allows one upside: no big, central DB of biometric data - each local area keeps their own. By removing a central identity DB, corrupt officials will have smaller targets to break.
Re:America has over 50 types (Score:5, Insightful)
and you're not required to have any of them to live in the u.s.
Mandatory New World Order post (Score:3, Insightful)
Watch your Overlords as they beta test your future in 3rd world or smaller countries.
China, New Zealand, Finland, Thailand: Internet Censorship under different pretexts.
India: Biometric IDs.
Feel free to add to the list.
Re:America has over 50 types (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah. Of course, not having any also means (in practice) that you won't be able to drive a car, board a plane, open a bank account, work, travel internationally, book a hotel room, get a credit card, ...
Actually, you pretty much can't do anything at all, other than work all day on your farm to provide your own food.
Re:Billionth Indian (Score:3, Insightful)
dude
troll much?
If I were an Indian I'd be pissed that you can sterotypically say that all Indians are inpatient and rude, and get marked +5 Informative.....
You should have a -10 D0uchebag Mod
Reliability of DNA (Score:2, Insightful)
In a perfect world, DNA is reliable. The world isn't perfect. There are problems with collection and contamination, problems with human error and incompetence, and the fact that we rely on only a partial DNA sampling rather than a complete sequencing. This is further complicated by mutations within our own bodies and the occasional case of a person with more than one DNA, either due to a congenital issue, organ or bone marrow transplant, or other issue.
IMHO every supposed DNA match should be confirmed with an "extract all the data you can from the sample then compare it to the suspect's DNA, then explain any deviations or rule him out as a suspect.
Even with all these problems, in many cases it is more reliable than eyewitness identification, fuzzy video cameras, and non-DNA forensics. In the US criminal justice system, we have "beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard rather than "beyond an absolute doubt." For non-death-penalty cases, society has decided it's better to imprison a few innocent people than let a few BIGNUM go free. For death penalty cases attitudes are swinging to "if you aren't 100% sure don't kill him."
In any case, DNA should be preserved indefinitely after a conviction so it can be re-tested as more refined tests become available. What may be a "1 in a million chance he's not the man" today may be come "he's definitely not the man" 15 years from now, but only if evidence is preserved.
Re:Billionth Indian (Score:3, Insightful)
It does not suck. It just has social norms different from those in other parts of the world.