The report calls into question key aspects of India’s digital ID program, including its heavily centralised nature, the reliability of its biometric identification systems and its vulnerability to data breaches.
Relations between India and the so-called “Five Eye” nations (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) are in a bit of a rough patch. According to an article in The Hindu, India’s second most circulated English-language newspaper, India’s relations with Canada are now at their lowest point since the 1980s, after Justin Trudeau raised “credible” allegations last week that Indian agents were involved in the murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar — a Sikh plumber-cum-separatist leader shot dead by masked gunmen on the outskirts of Vancouver in June.
Delhi, of course, has denied any involvement while saying it will cooperate with any investigation. Nonetheless, the ensuing diplomatic crisis has so far led to visa suspensions and reciprocal expulsions of senior diplomats. The Trudeau government already paused negotiations on a Canada-India free trade agreement more than two weeks before going public with its allegations.
And it is not just Canada that is casting aspersions on India’s possible role in the crime. According to the US envoy in Ottawa, David Cohen, Trudeau’s allegations, first aired in Canada’s parliament last week and then reiterated at the UN General Assembly last weekend, were based on “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners”:
“There was a lot of communication between Canada and the United States about this… We have been consulting throughout very closely with our Canadian colleagues — and not just consulting, coordinating with them — on this issue. And from our perspective, it is critical that the Canadian investigation proceed, and it would be important that India work with the Canadians on this investigation. We want to see accountability, and it’s important that the investigation run its course and lead to that result.”
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has echoed these sentiments, confirming that the US is “coordinating” with Canada and is seeking “accountability,” while stressing that “it’s important that the investigation run its course.” Interestingly, Blinken did not mention the spiralling US-Canada dispute in the readout following his meeting in Washington yesterday with India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, but that does not mean it was not discussed.
Aadhaar Under Attack
Now, a report by Moody’s Investor Services on some of the challenges facing digital identity programs around the world is raising hackles in the subcontinent. The main cause of the anger is a three-paragraph section that calls into question key aspects of India’s digital ID program, known as Aadhaar, including its heavily centralised nature, the reliability of the biometric identification systems it uses and its vulnerability to data breaches:
Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital ID program, assigns unique numbers to over 1.2 billion Indian residents using biometric and demographic data. This system enables access to public and private services, with verification via fingerprint or iris scans, and alternatives like One-Time Passcodes. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) administers Aadhaar, aiming to integrate marginalized groups and expand welfare benefits access.
However, the system faces some hurdles, including the burden of establishing authorization and concerns about biometric reliability. There have been cases of service denials, and there are risks to reliability of biometric technologies, especially for manual laborers in hot, humid climates.
The real kicker comes in the third paragraph, which argues that decentralised identity [DID] programs such as the SSI [Self-Sovereign Identity] system rolled out by countries like Estonia — which is now working with the Zelensky government to pilot a national mobile application modeled on Ukraine’s Diia application — offer a far better approach to digital ID than India’s heavily centralised system:
In recent years, the spotlight has shifted toward DID [Decentralized Identity programs] as a strategic response to the security and privacy vulnerabilities posed by centralized ID systems like Aadhaar. While DID systems are currently in their formative stages, they harbor significant potential to introduce a more robust and private avenue for managing digital identities.
Perhaps most damning of all, the short section on Aadhaar is presented alongside an even shorter section on Worldcoin, the controversial iris biometric cryptocurrency project developed by San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity. Co-founded by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, the venture has “faced scrutiny over its data collection practices,” notes the report. “Critics have also voiced concerns about potential privacy violations, security breaches, and the potential misuse of Worldcoin’s data, which could lead to identity theft or surveillance.”
Moody’s Motives?
It is not clear whether Moody’s criticisms are merely poorly timed, given the geopolitical backdrop, or form part of a broader campaign in the Anglosphere against India’s economy…
Read the full article on Naked Capitalism
Nick Corbishley 