India ID Program Wins World Bank Praise Despite ‘Big Brother’ Fears
- Over 1.1 billion citizens have biometric IDs across India
- Concerns over data breaches, privacy and surveillance remain
Aadhaar enrollment.
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A new internet is being built: it has 1.1 billion users, a third of the world wide web. Indian banks are running transactions on it and Microsoft has embedded it into Skype.
The biometric identifier program Aadhaar -- or "foundation" in Hindi -- has taken on a life of its own, authenticating loans and job seekers, pensions and money transfers across India. And last week’s landslide state election win could embolden Prime Minister Narendra Modi to push Aadhaar beyond its early cost-saving goal, even as questions are raised about the security of its data and the proliferation of private companies seeking to profit from the information it stores.