A clan as well as the National Stadium bars and restaurants and for the first time in sixty years italys Football Team have failed to qualify for the world cup the four time cup winners drew nil no with sweden in a qualifying playoff it was a game they had to win those are the headlines the news continues here on aljazeera after inside story by phone at. Is this a massive breach of privacy in India Government leaders want to expand the Worlds Largest biometric database and link more than a billion id cards with phones and Bank Accounts opponents are urging Supreme Court judges to say no this is inside story. Were. With. Hello there and welcome to the program im Laura Carlisle the Worlds Largest biometric Identity Card system is in india and if the government gets its way the ad hoc id card system will soon be linked to mobile phones and Bank Accounts of more than a billion indians government leaders say ad hoc reduces Identity Theft corruption and bureaucracy opponents say its a taste of big brother which violates everyones privacy some have taken the government to the Supreme Court which is expected to deliver a verdict by the end of the month judges are being asked why should indians give the government information in a neat Little Package what if the system is hacked by a malicious group the government web site continues to describe as a voluntary program but some say that the government is coercing them to use it and heres why the first ad hoc account was created in two thousand and ten has been slowly expanded across the nation ever since its the most at its most basic level at heart is about verifying identity confirming age and gender plus biometric details such as fingerprints and iris scans but there have been reports of out how being tied to Welfare Benefits no account means no rations and now the government has said Everyone Needs to link their ad hoc counts to their mobile phone numbers by the sixth of february next year and by the thirty first of march next year also sins need to connect their Bank Accounts to the system or they will be frozen. Oh lets get the thoughts of our guests now and joining us from new delhi Sanjay Kapoor hes the editor of hard news magazine and bangalore a lot Prasanna Kumar senior resident fellow at the video center for legal policy and in london robert james founder and c. E. O. Of unity which is a Digital IdentityService Welcome gentlemen all of you thanks for being here on inside story and up first of all lets get a little bit more of an idea about what adhoc actually is i hadnt heard of it until i started reading about it today im sure many of our viewers havent heard of it because many people dont have this national Identity Card all of their data being stored by the government what data does the government have access to him so before i begin a couple of short disclaimers i used to be able counsel for the u. I. V. Ai which is the authority in charge of a few years ago i embarked of an organization which has also helped the Union Government to draft the law which governs the other part but today im speaking in a purely private ok. Again were going to have my support to get to what is our part of it is not just the technology it is not just the technology and the cord which collects the biometric data of the individual along with that person the leaders of by making it is your employer your fingerprints your iris scans it is also a system to store this information how this information will be used in what context and to what extent so the art is supposed to be on not your unique id for every person who wants it which will contain of all the details which can be verified but you verify of the reason is that the issue but what are essentially that there is also a card which is given to individuals which they can actually see this is. The possible need for this is that theyre not aware of ideas of india it is not as if there were not enough the issue was that several were local level and may not necessarily be used at all the way of you needed and he thought people who needed one but at the same time over the years are has expanded now you have the it body which has been set up with regulation govern art which is the u. I. That is in charge of the biometric id itself but you have many government many a court of appeals and many agencies now demanding that you produce who populate implication only two of this is somewhat problematic actually its what it tells any exam pick up on an earlier point that you made us saying that its available to every person who wants set but the course the crux of the matter today for our discussion here is that now its going to be banditry and a lot of people are very unhappy with that so just a Company Point of course it is not mandatory that is it is not as if every citizen every day president of india is required to have not yet has or is there not yet what has happened is that a whole range of services and government related schemes require you to have an art to the extent that now it is almost necessary to have a new life even though there is no exact eagle requirement to have one of because you will need it for such a wide range of services defacto it becomes almost essential to have what it is and say do you have an adult do you agree with everyone having this. No i think there are problems but i havent either had a virtual coconut out at a time when it was not mandatory in the ready early days when it was announced and i just took it for a lark i mean i never target really use it much now or everything is sort of you think every service which is being sold out there leaking out the hard way that princes mobile phones for for example your bank account everything is being made it mandatory and it has become difficult for people who do not have it to access the services and that is where i think the problem lies that if you do not have another heart of god you are being denied you are excluded from the exclusion exclusion part of our heart is causing problems at Different Levels for example. The the middle meal which has been provided by the government different there the other hard been made mandatory if you have been reading the newspapers you would find that there was a child who was denied food because he did not have another heart of god and she died and that was really a bill great tragedy which im calling trying to project cause Technology Even to see impacting ordinary lives and that the rate behaves that its a very a colossal disaster that was unfolding in front of five no i dont want to or one hundred and whenever the advantages of there are some i mean if its calling causing somebody to die then its clearly not working. This way and i think exclusion is a real problem with the we are not as bin laden implemented more than concerns of privacy of course everybody is talking about how much do you know is being collected a lot are better but that it be used by servants and so on i do think it is but the issue of exclusion is the bigger one does somebody nearly need an ar hard to obtain something as basic as it gave me the government says this is needed to stop me but you know it bill it doesnt seem to me that its only its all me but mandating that you will store stuff you get at the end of the day are hired as a tool they need to be accorded taken within government one do we really want people to use our thought what do we want to make it mandatory for and basically just keep it option that people wanted it so i completely agree that yes there is a problem of exclusion because look court is being put into what we should mandate the aadhaar for and what we should robyn give us an idea of what youd see as involvement with an Indian Government in this sense is so you know t. Is a free Digital Identity system its voluntary and its high purpose see so you choose to usual passport or potentially consent prove beyond hasa system to create your own Digital Identity and then you can share that information with organizations or individuals so the important points are its voluntary and secondly but its private so we dont actually know who is using our system once they have on boarded instead its just be organization and the individual who receive or a seat each so that they legally know that the transaction has happened but we dont need to know what has happened so we think thats a very popular way of doing it ok and how potentially it is this change indians use of the adult system. Well i think there may well be you know sensible reasons why people have to use the aha system because it is very difficult online for people to prove who they are and its very expensive for the Indian Government or other businesses in india to kind of check who somebody is if they just let you fill in a web form thats thats not a good way of knowing whether somebody is actually the correct person feeling before me so i think theyll be times where you know for that reason you have to use potentially the government system but in many other cases individuals will be at a choose if youve got a buyer and a seller on a classified site it really should be easy for me to basically say to the seller id like to know your verified name and if youre not prepared to give me Bad Information that would worry me and i probably wont buy the goods off you so sharing a name without having to share all of the other information which would be on a passport or the aha system is a nice tight data minimizing way but you still get the same benefits in business becomes easier thankful sanjay do you see this u. T. Believe it is being able to replace some of the ways in which users have to use and therefore be able to protect some of their data and retain control over it you know the major problem with the other car is that then began to see different databases for instance. Getting in the shore and it has become mandatory that you should have another go for mobile services again at home run Bank Services again i dont and then im out of multiple services where these by magic numbers have become very very important i mean they become mandatory so there is a possibility that you may be an officer designated to look into you know create certain kind of profile use of hard as a bridge between different databases because they work in silos and one source. I lost can be in a certain race connected by a designated off so it becomes very easy to have a profile of what exactly that person is doing something which was you know was a question at the time when this entire system was conceived here that we really have a government which would be more keen on surveillance and they would be bizarre they would resort to use of this data in such a manner that would make a citizen rather wonderful so in a certain way you cannot really shake up your past if you have. Made some kind of transformation which goes against the law of the land you think that you could probably get a loan from the bank or you can just forget about it you could. Think that something will be a pastoral which is in you so that is a major fear because it has created a servants ecosystem where it becomes you know very easy for the state to keep track of practically every slack really as you stated earlier the big big brother would know exactly what youre doing here one of the really interesting things that i read was that you would have to. Tell her number if you wanted to spend or make a purchase that cost more than seven hundred eighty dollars that seems to be an incredible infringement on privacy. Absolutely this is exactly what is likely to happen in every which way and we have been seeing a great amount of intrusion which did not exist i mean if you. People have been getting income tax notices people have been getting many many of those you know intrusion from inspector because for quite a while when we were trying to the government and the government was trying to initiate reform one of the things that they were trying to fight is the intrusion of inspect and in a certain way are staging a comeback and other car could become one of those. Factors which would in a certain way make it more targeted and. That is the reason why the matter is coming up in the Supreme Court there was a heavy sea judgment which made a fundamental right and that Supreme Court rather cleverly and creatively tried to sidestep the hard issue from the judgment but now they have to bite the bullet and the third or fourth week of november that matter is going to come up and then then they will have to take a decision about if they have been procrastinating for some reason or the other but then when they have to talk about it a lot of things are going to fall in place along what you say the Supreme Court. To me its difficult to say i mean i dont want to. Predict something but without too much facts on the court but let me just put in a little bit of context the nine judge bench decision affirmed that there was a right to privacy. It unanimously affirm that i previously includes the right to Informational Service that you will have control over the information or yourself however the judgement to terrify the of course like with every other way that i propose you dont have to you there are certain grounds on the basis of which that i perceive may be infringed or to say that the right of privacy does not extend to you saying i will pay my respects him of any compelling state interest whether this compelling state interest exist in the context of income tax maybe we dont know but it exist in the context of banks maybe we dont know but it exists in the context of a mobile phone the most maybe we dont know the fact is that we have to listen to the arguments get awfully and see how the status trying to justify things this is really what the court would be looking at each individual case is there a good reason to demand that everybody have an aardvark or link that are due to the bank account forms or income tax returns it can be made as a blanket statement theres no blanket statement to say that our heart is an invasion of privacy i think it will have to be examined in the context of each measure for which it has been made mandatory is it mandatory is it necessary in under the constitution for people to link harmful acts of life i think that is really what the Supreme Court will decide that im you should know hopefully by the end of your robin you have built a Company Based on the principle that the individual has the right to privacy over their information so im wondering does that put you at all and where the Indian Government weve gone into business with when were having this discussion about the Supreme Court having not had rules on how privacy laws in india not having a privacy nor itself. Well i think were just looking at another country in the u. K. If you are a seventeen year old and you want to prove youre over fifteen to go to the cinema or if they are street to prove your age youre going to have to show them your passport if you are nineteen and you want to go into a night club youre going to have to get your driving license out or your passport your driving license if they scan it on a machine has your address it has a lot of information about you including the precious driving license number you dont need to do that with a yellow t. You have to do it once the you know for example of an odd hole or with a passport to get the benefit of more previous see you have to initially verify your identity information but the beauty after vats for all of our uses is you can just prove youre over eighteen or you can prove that you are a name but you dont have to give them your passport and an image of your passport to do that and thats thats very difficult to do in the offline world if you havent got a Digital Identity on your phone and so i think theyll be lots of people who think well i as long as i believe its a private system and theyre not tracking me then i need to basically prove to the system who i am to ben be able to use minimize data to prove who i am to other people or businesses or even the government ok. And then also if this is it is not tracked and still you are going into business with a system that is being accused of being infringement on peoples private rights well remember remember our system is completely voluntary you dont have to use our how you could use your passport in india obviously not everybody has a passport but if you choose to basically use your hell with consent to basically create a you know t. You can then use a completely private you know t. To do your business in india where were back be with individuals or weve organized nations. We believe for many people they will voluntarily choose to do that because a prophecy and the lack of tracking the information and a much more limited amount of information that they need to keep so in the u. K. Supermarkets will be able to check that you are over eighteen but they wont need to know your name ok and they wont need to know your address and look at this as this is something that you would be interested in using i believe you have to have a smart phone to do so would you be interested in and getting your tea and your phone first and foremost i dont have another right. I do have a passport. But yes i dont have another it sounds interesting but the point with the art is not the private sector use problem i dont think too many people have issues. But using you know or verify that may be the issue of guns and as you just pointed out when big collect this are hard you know about you know technically it is it is against the law and there are already problems in the law which prevent people from of keeping track of your hard number or using your other car as your id it because it can be done its not supposed to be like all passwords which can be easily duplicated its a basic law document but its just its all the details are already there so of course i think a Technology Like this could help in assuring that the other is more secure but the basic problem comes to again still what we just discussed and watsonville to said how to ensure what the government makes use of this in a sensible manner nor does it use this in a manner which does not infringe too many peoples rights how to ensure that does not result in like a soviet state i think that is the deal question and that will not be to me personally it is not something that technology can fully so on can improve the technology definitely going to improve the systems on the technology. But at the end of the day you will you know solid legal structure you will need a solid law with Profit Institutions started ensuring that your data is used properly and not misuse of the well even a lot with so many questions still being asked other countries are eyeing similar systems youve got american delegation visiting new delhi just last week to study the Identity Program indian diplomat say russia algeria and asking about how the system works into these are already has its own version of add her biometric cards are needed to obtain sim cards or to use the Government Health care system several countries such as bob kerrey and brazil have also issued biometric id cards others are skeptical britain scrapped a plan for National Identity rights to seven years ago after concerns about privacy and civil rights sanjay weve heard from the world bank chief economist that could be good for the world if its widely adopted it gives everybody an identity weve got one point five billion people in the world who cant prove who they are do you agree with that. You know im not really sure you know Indian Experience cannot be replicated in different parts of india you know you have a bureaucracy which is still mired in the one nine hundred fifty s. In the sixtys and youre trying to use a bureaucracy to implement this technology there is a huge dispatch i mean if you go by newspaper reports which you do not get the kind of primacy that it deserves there are number of you know villages in the central indian state of maharashtra which have the same biometric number like the entire village has one by magic number this is preposterous and because of this season the farmers cannot get loans and then you have multiple problems like there would be so much of. An exaggeration in terms of the benefits is getting in terms of identifying cost beneficiaries of Government Programs people say i mean the government will say that they will see about nine billion dollars but there is no way to unbundle these claims and these dumb birds and the only cost benefit analysis of our high was done in two thousand and ten when there was no database so you know there is a bit of a problem and as somebody very wise he said the revenue model of the internet is surveillance and biometric in a certain way fits into this entire you know this concept so im rather short and i dont like the very idea that you know people could be reduced to a number and they do not have the freedom that they would have in terms to sidestep the prying eyes of the state so world bank assertion notwithstanding i can be very comfortable with the idea. That theres no turning back if the Supreme Court ruling rules that it is mandatory for you to link you at our number to your mobile phone are going to have to get one otherwise youll be cut off i guess so yes absolutely and so its very difficult to roll these things back once theyre out and of course the problem with the u. K. Is that there was this massive fail. Can create just as sanjay was saying where does it stop how much information does the government need to know well in there and one wonders where its going to end youre right one wonders where its going to end but lets not also forget this the government already collects information about us and harbor different witness speaking for the Indian Experience im pretty sure that the local Police Station probably will have more information about you that was certainly a government sitting in delhi so its not as if so villains happens only because of our or ive heard a lot of the government governments to do something they couldnt do before if we saw the kind of surveillance techniques that are available with the n. S. A. With the other governments in the world this is nothing but the United States leaving that aside i think of essentially the other debate should be one about is this tool worth what we are spending on it may seem difficult to roll back it may seem difficult but i dont see why not if again at the end of the day its for the court of course because the market is spending to see is it necessary to have the other for accessing x. Y. And z. Service to morrow it is probably what if the government has this conversation internally and with the public where it should be actively whos the other and water be used for what could be the case where it is used in the interest of the public and very does not make sense to use it im actively hum Public Interest its difficult to meet the very broader overgeneralize as i said before its difficult to make a broad argument either because there are very good in every situation or i want to be part of any situation and there are many are going to need if that simply arent we will be very uncivil saying Supreme Court rules towards the end of base year because pay a close eye on that for the moment we do have to end our discussion many thanks to all of you for joining us Sanjay Kapoor a lot prasanna and robin tunes. And thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting a website thats aljazeera adult called on to father discussion to go to a Facebook Page thats facebook dot com for slash a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter hundreds at a. J. Inside story from me and the whole team head by an eco. Witness documentaries that open your eyes at this time on aljazeera. On counting that cost the princes poets what it means for the saudi economy how rich do you have to be to avoid paying taxes call for tougher laws after the paradise type this show how the worlds wealthiest hide their money bust jainas trump card counting the cost at this time on aljazeera. Matheson in doha the top stories on all jazeera irans declared tuesday