Dark Data: India

Aadhaar isn’t progress — it’s dystopian and dangerous

Due to this reading I looked more into the Mozilla Community and I’m shocked that I didn’t know this initiative existed. This advocacy for having an open and accessible internet on a global scale is both darring and encouraging. The fact that most of the Mozilla Community are volunteers reinforces the fact that there are people of all ages who are taking security and protection of personal data very seriously. Sadly, India seems to going in the opposite direction from where the EU is moving towards in terms of data protection laws. Aadhaar is legitimately has tagged and is continuing to tag billions of individuals by collecting fingerprints and iris scans. Aadhaar then provides the Indian government and private companies access to this data. Aadhaar is a national biometric identity database. This database and Oracle seem to be very similar, but Aadhaar is demanding more from its ‘victims’, and their involvement with the government seems to run deep. Deep in the sense that the government is lying to the people of India by calling Aadhaar, ‘Aadhaar API’ or ‘Open API’ in order to soften the intrusiveness of Aadhaar. This sort of false packaging or labeling of a database company should only raise red flags. Once the government starts lying in order to protect a company it adds an extra exhausting layer of work for those opposing it, hopefully this only amps up the Mozilla Community to fight back harder.

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India’s National ID Program May Be Turning The Country Into A Surveillance State

Dannnnggg! This reading went more detailed into the works of Aadhaar. Literally people are given an ID card with a number and that number is used to determine how much food they get, wages, bank accounts, etc. That legit sounds like the start of a Black Mirror episode. What if Black Mirror is really a commentary on how data is already being used in various parts of the world… woah. Aadhaar and its true actions have flown under the radar for many years, and I am not quite sure why their actions are being brought to light. Granting Federal agencies access to the entire database probably caught a lot of people’s attention. But, this Skype lite might’ve played a huge role as well. Also the interview demo of the product is a classic misrepresentation of the gravity of this products function. I’m tired of data brokers, and database companies claiming how by having this data it benefits everyone. They package it in such a way that people just believe it. This idea of biometric authentication has been commonly portrayed in various sci fi films, but sadly, by this point, I believe that the fiction aspect should be taken out if it.

“There’s a big difference between you identifying yourself to the government, and the government identifying who you are," he said. (Sunil Abraham, CIS Director,)