New Delhi: There is "legitimate concern"
about the unique identification number's database being secure
from possible hacking and free from any misuse, head of the
ambitious project Nandan Nilekani has said.
"That is a very legitimate concern. We are looking at the
design as to how to make it secure," Nilekani, the chairman of
Unique Identification Authority of India, said in
an interview to a news channel.
He was replying to a question on how it can be ensured
that the database will not be misused and result in an
invasion of privacy.
On possible misuse by hackers, he said that it is again a
legitimate concern but in every system there will be people
who will try to hack on it.
"Some are impenetrable, some are not. We will have to
design it as good as possible. We can certainly create checks
and balances. The important thing is -- is the risk of hacking
and privacy large enough not to do this project?
The project has so many significant benefits for the poor
in making it inclusive and in giving them a chance to
participate in the country's progress that it is worth it, he
said, adding "we have to mitigate those risks".
Asked about the system, which in the wrong hands could
be a powerful tool for religious or caste profiling, he said
"We are not keeping any profiling attributes in our database."
On the issue of technology, Nilekani said, "There is no
question that this is a project where we are going into
uncharted territories, the technological challenges are
immense and one of the risks of this project is technology."
However, the inclusivity that this project will provide
for the 700 million people in this country who are outside the
system is immense enough to justify doing it, he said.
When pointed that the national insurance in Britain
(which Nilekani compared the UID to) has been around and
developing slowly but it doesn't have details that could lead
to an invasion of privacy or misused for profiling, he said,
"These are legitimate concerns and I think we have to address
them in the public as well as in the laws and so on".
However, he said, there is no other country in the world
where a billion peoples' biometrics have been captured and
stored in an online database.
"In that sense, it has not been done before. We don't
have to invent the technology but we have to scale up the
existing technology to work at this scale. It's not a
reinvention but a scaling up," he said.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, September 13, 2009, 12:07