India is building a biometric database for 1.3 billion people — and enrollment is mandatory

Los Angeles Times Inside the buzzing enrollment agency, young professionals wearing slim-fitting jeans and lanyards around their necks tapped away at keyboards and fiddled with fingerprint scanning devices as they helped build the biggest and most ambitious biometric database ever conceived. “I’m really happy that the current government is completely endorsing Aadhaar and using it for a wide variety of services that will transform governance.” Nilekani calls Aadhaar “hugely empowering” for the poor, but not long ago even he argued that enrollment should remain optional so that no Indians were prevented from accessing essential services. A Twitter account called “Rethink Aadhaar” logs new instances almost daily of Indians who have suffered because scanners couldn’t read their fingerprints or because of errors in the database. “The government’s ambitions have gotten greater over time.” This month, the Center for Internet and Society, a New Delhi think tank, reported that federal and state agencies had published up to 135 million Aadhaar numbers — some including sensitive information such as a person’s caste and religion, or details of pension payments — on unsecured websites accessible through just a few clicks. “Maybe Aadhaar didn’t need to be this big,” Chakravarty said, adding that the government could simply have worked to fix inefficiencies in individual welfare programs.