There continued unconstitutional dispute over India's digital identity plan weak democracy and legal system. Supreme Court came up with decisions over time. Let us have an analysis of the SC decisions or orders.

On September 26, 2018, the five judges of the Supreme Court of India addressed the world’s largest digital identity management project involving the largest number of people in the world-the Unique Identity Management Program (UID) and Biometric Identification Project of the Federal Government of India (hereinafter referred to as Aadhaar Project ) made a judgment confirming the constitutionality of the Aadhaar Project.

 

In a 1,448-page judgment document, the Supreme Court of India ruled to confirm the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project. Among the five judges who submitted the ruling opinion, Judge SGL fully agreed without reservations, and three judges submitted separate rulings with reservations and agreed in principle.

The only dissenting judge, Chandrakud, said the Aadhaar project was clearly unconstitutional. He believes that the large-scale collection of national biological data and personal information by the government violates the privacy of citizens.

The sharing of the citizen database by the government and commercial institutions is an unconstitutional act. The national information digitization plan makes it easier for the government to monitor and monitor the people.

Security is not fully guaranteed. Chandrakud submitted a ruling that fully expressed his opinion, arguing that the Aadhaar project should be stopped immediately and completely, and all related databases should be deleted.

What is the Aadhaar project?

To understand the Aadhaar project, it is necessary to mention the “UID plan” of the Indian government, that is, the “unique identity management plan”. India is a country with a population of 1.339 billion (officially announced figures in 2017).

Due to the lack of government governance and public service capabilities and the traditional awareness of the public, there are many loopholes in national identity and household registration management.

Among them, there are serious problems of unfair distribution and inefficient distribution, which have been criticized.

Therefore, in 2008, the Indian government proposed a project named "Aadhaar" to provide each Indian national with a unique Aadhaar Unique ID consisting of 12 Arabic numerals.

In September 2010, the Aadhaar project was officially launched and was implemented by the Indian Identity Authority (UIDAI).

As of February 28, 2017, the project has implemented biometric data collection (including photos, ten-finger fingerprints, iris scans, etc.) for up to 1.12 billion people in India, and later added face recognition technology.

 

Unlike the United States, China, and other countries, the Indian government promoted the Aadhaar project, which was originally designed to solve the phenomenon that the government's benefits for the poor are often impersonated.

At the beginning of the project, the Indian authorities stated that whether nationals participate in the project should be based on the principle of voluntariness, and government officials should not forcefully promote it.

The dual goals that the project promotes are expected to be achieved.

First, through better data positioning and identification, it is clear who has the right to receive social benefits according to the law.

Second, through the big data project, the efficiency of welfare distribution and social relief is improved to save the government. Administrative costs.

Aadhaar Project single ID

After the implementation of the Aadhaar project, the "single ID" was widely used in various scenarios.

Social welfare distribution and relief to the poor, including student grants, scholarships, pensions, unemployment subsidies, food subsidies, medical subsidies, disaster subsidies, targeted poverty alleviation, agricultural insurance, and special subsidies for women and children, are all identified through identification codes. It also entails money distribution.

To a certain extent, the phenomenon of corruption, inefficiency and inaction prevailing in the Indian public service and social institutions has been resolved.

 

It should be said that after promoting the Aadhaar project, the Indian government has received affirmation from all quarters. Among them, officials of the World Bank highly affirm the project.

India has a large number of extremely poor people. The World Bank and the United Nations invest a lot of relief materials in India every year to implement poverty alleviation plans.

However, due to the low administrative efficiency and the prevalence of corruption in India, many relief materials have been impersonated and bank credit fraud has become common practice (the use of the name of the poor to borrow policy loans).

The Aadhaar project has effectively solved the difficulty of identification and the cost of credit qualification review. The problem of staying high.

After the affirmation by the World Bank, Bangladesh, the Philippines and other countries with similar circumstances are interested in introducing the project to promote the digital identification of national identity.

 

Voices and Doubts on Aadhaar project

With the advancement of the Aadhaar project, there have been more and more voices of objections and doubts. Some civil rights organizations in India have criticized the project as seriously damaging citizens ’right to privacy.

In India, the Constitution does not clearly state that citizens ’right to privacy is protected by the Constitution. In a constitutional lawsuit of the Indian Supreme Court on August 24, 2017, the judgment stated that Article 21 of the Indian Constitution stipulates that “ the right to life and freedom of citizens" inviolable, born free.

Privacy and Aadhaar

The meaning of freedom includes that privacy is not infringed by public rights and others. No privacy means incomplete freedom. Therefore, privacy is also a natural part of citizens’ freedom and protected by the Constitution.

This landmark case incorporates the right to privacy into the scope of constitutional protection. That is to say, the lawsuit on privacy can be filed for unconstitutional review proceedings, which will be heard by the Supreme Court of India.

 

Legal experts believe that in the Aadhaar project, fingerprints, irises, and human faces are collected for the purpose of identification. These are biological information with specific properties that cannot be reset like a password, and are "sensitive that should be specially protected." "Personal information" is part of the general right to privacy.

 

Criticism of Aadhaar

Another reason why the Aadhaar project has been criticized is that it has been declared a voluntary participation plan from the beginning, but the government completed the identity certification through the Aadhaar project and promoted the distribution of social welfare and relief plans, so that rejection of participants means that it may be excluded.

Outside the scope of the government's welfare system and relief targets, the so-called voluntary participation is essentially transformed into mandatory.

 

Aadhaar ID Codes

Secondly, as the project progresses, the Indian Identity Authority continues to expand the use of ID codes, and requires users to bind bank account numbers, mobile phone numbers, insurance account numbers and ID codes to facilitate identity verification and transfer, tax The authority also associates the identification code with the tax registration number.

With the expansion of the use of "single ID code", even Internet services, international travel, marriage registration, etc., will require applicants to provide identification codes.

In addition to government departments and social organizations, many private companies also require the service recipients to provide "single identification codes" for identity registration and identification when providing services, otherwise they cannot provide services.

 

Application of Adhaar

The application scenarios of the Aadhaar project are becoming wider and wider, and more and more government agencies, social organizations, and commercial companies require the "superior identification code" to be provided by the manager or the service recipient. But they have not been able to obtain identification because they did not participate in the Aadhaar project. The coders will be inaccessible in real life and become "quarantined and digital refugees" in the Internet age.

 

UIDAI

As the government's competent authority, the Indian Identity Authority, in the promotion of the Aadhaar project, focuses on management rather than service, and bureaucracy is serious.

The specific implementation department knows that many remote villages in India have no access to electricity, and there is a lack of Internet use environment.

In the progress of the project, the promotion of administrative efficiency and the public’s sense of reform are not taken as work performance evaluation indicators.

Penetration rate and data stock. Condescending and simple and rough treatment of the poor ethnic groups who lack the most basic ability to make a living in the digital age, but ignore the initial "voluntary principle" of the project and the target function of serving the people.

 

The critics also pointed out that the Aadhaar project claims to serve the poor, but in the process of implementation, it has pushed some extremely poor people to a more embarrassing situation.

When distributing benefits or granting relief, government officials require applicants to provide Aadhaar identity, e-mail address, and bank account number.

Those who are unable to provide, must rush to the address designated by the government within the specified time, provide various documents, and receive relief in person, otherwise for giving up.

Many mountain villages in India have inconvenient transportation, and the railway system is notoriously bad. Most of the poor people are frail elderly, who may lose the opportunity to receive relief because they cannot get it on the spot.

 

Another concern to the public is that the Indian Identity Authority UIDAI

(UIDAI) After the establishment of the national identity database, the national personal information associated with the identification code is increasing. In terms of statistics and marketing, these data have extremely high commercial value and can help commercial companies to accurately market. Some commercial companies hope to cooperate with the database management department to dig deep into the commercial value of data. Some software technology companies are also selling solutions to the government, suggesting that in the areas of public governance and combating crime, analyzing data through software to better achieve social control.

It is for this reason that the Aadhaar project has received more criticism. In a previous lawsuit, the Supreme Court of India has ruled that the act of sharing national data between the government and commercial organizations is unconstitutional and should be prohibited.

However, where the benefits are, people must tend to. The court's injunction obviously cannot prevent profit-seekers from obtaining database resources through improper channels.

 

Another reason for the public’s dissatisfaction with the Aadhaar project is that some problems occurred during the progress of the Aadhaar project, such as data security. The Indian Identity Authority apparently did not respond well to the voice of public doubt, but just vowed that the database is not safe. There are problems, and data breaches are only small-scale cases.

In the face of frequent data breaches, the competent department was embarrassed but apparently lacked timely and effective solutions. Many data breaches are obviously caused by insiders committing crimes or cooperating inside and outside. At the time of legislation, the relevant laws gave the Indian Identity Authority the criminal prosecution power for criminal acts infringing the Aadhaar project, but it is clear that many criminal crimes involving the Aadhaar project have not been prosecuted, and the complaints of the victims have been ignored or shelved. Be accountable.

 

The outbreak occurred in November 2017. The Indian Identity Authority confirmed to the public that due to a serious data breach in the Aadhaar database, the database was subject to external intrusion and data packets were leaked. The identification codes of more than 100 million people and their associated user names, home addresses, bank accounts, and mobile phones The phone and email address were leaked. The hacker even posted the leaked data on 210 public government websites, proving to the public that "the security of the database is not as reliable as the administrator claims."

 

This data breach has caused great damage to people’s personal privacy, information security, transaction security, and property security. It has also caused a wave of serious dissatisfaction between the people and the society against the government and bureaucracy, which in turn has triggered Aadhaar.

The question of the constitutionality of the project finally launched the constitutionality review litigation.

The principles established by the unconstitutional Social Security Number Card review ruling

In the ruling, the five justices of the Supreme Court have disputed the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project, but most of their knowledge is basically the same. That is, through the Internet, biotechnology and database construction, India has such a 13.

In a country with a population of 100 million, it is necessary and beneficial to complete the identification and authentication of citizenship, to improve the working efficiency of administrative organs and social organizations, and to prevent the occurrence of corruption from the system.

 

The original intention and design goal of the Aadhaar project are to improve the country’s governance and government’s ability to serve the public through the use of technology.

The welfare of the Aadhaar project for the development of Indian society is obvious, and there is no evidence that in the Aadhaar project design, there is an intention to deliberately violate the spirit of the Constitution and infringe upon the people’s constitutional rights.

This may be the reason for this unconstitutional review lawsuit, which resulted in a four-to-one voting majority to confirm the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project.

 

The opposition minority judge Chandrakud, in his separate judgment, worriedly pointed out that while people enjoy the conveniences brought by Internet technology, they obviously underestimated the more than one billion involved in the Aadhaar project.

The identification and related data collection carried out by Indian citizens has brought unprecedented challenges to national security, social order and the protection of personal rights.

Unlike several other judges, the security of cloud storage technology is not the same, Chandrakud The judge was skeptical of the security claimed by the Indian Identity Authority and the information security experts of the Aadhaar project.

Judge Chandrakud believes that in the Aadhaar project, the key core data inventory is placed in a centralized cloud system management model.

Although the technology company claims that this is a technology-guaranteed and very secure database management model, it combines the previous data leakage.

In the face of data security problems in the Internet era, large-scale data leakage may cause serious harm to most uncertain people. Faced with hacker threats and data security, the Aadhaar project authorities and technical service companies apparently failed to submit convincing solutions.

 

In addition, Judge Chandrakud believes that the importance of beautifying the Aadhaar project for the development of Indian society is the fact that the promotion of the Aadhaar project and the collection of citizens’ personal information data objectively directly violate the citizens’ right to protect personal information.

The right to privacy also violates citizens’ right to choose lifestyles, that is, citizens have the right to choose a lifestyle that completely escapes the Internet. This is part of citizens’ right to freedom and self-determination.

Digital Prisoner

But it is clear that the Aadhaar project and the national information collection and database construction it has promoted have protected the constitutional rights of civil liberties from the foundation, and people will be trapped in a "digital prisoner", whether you want it or not.

Yes, you have lost the decision-making power of lifestyle.

 

The positive significance of the Indian Supreme Court ruling is that although the Aadhaar project is confirmed to be constitutional, it does not mean that the Aadhaar project managers and executors can do whatever they want. Because the ruling also establishes some rules of the game and establishes the legal boundary of the behavior.

 

SC Ruling on Voluntary Principle of Aadhaar

First of all, in the ruling, the voluntary principle of participation in the Aadhaar project was reaffirmed.

Government departments, social organizations, and commercial institutions must not require or in disguise to require applicants to provide identification codes, and must not refuse service or reduce services because they cannot provide them service standards.

The practice of forcibly establishing links between identification codes and mobile phone numbers and bank accounts has been declared unconstitutional.

 

In addition, the ruling stated that private commercial companies cannot force clients to provide identification codes; at the same time, any commercial use or data analysis of the database collected by the Aadhaar project was declared a violation of the Constitution on the protection of citizens’ privacy. The behaviors are not constitutional. the use of the Aadhaar database must be carried out strictly in accordance with the law.

Even if the database is used by law enforcement and judicial institutions for the performance of their duties, they can only be used strictly in specific circumstances. Under any authorized use the relevant legislation of the Aadhaar database will be subject to constitutional review.

The content of the review includes not only legality but also "tests of necessity and proportionality".

 

The social significance and repercussions of the Base ID case

The unconstitutional review proceedings carried out around the Aadhaar project and the judicial opinions clearly stated by the judges of the Supreme Court of India in the ruling, although the background is in India, the legal issues involved in this period include digital identity, personal information protection And data security, etc., but it is a cross-jurisdictional and cross-cultural worldwide problem and problem in the Internet era.

 

Supreme Court's Constitutional Ruling on Aadhaar

India’s Supreme Court’s Aadhaar project constitutionality ruling responded to some sensitive issues in the Aadhaar project.

While proclaiming the Aadhaar project’s constitutionality, it also established some rules that showed the Indian Supreme Court ’s judges on some controversial issues. attitude.

But it is clear that even among the five judges who made the ruling, the concepts and views have not been completely unified, and the dispute continues.

 

Government Response to Supreme Court Ruling on Aadhaar

Fortunately, the Indian government has responded positively to the Supreme Court’s ruling and stated that it will carry out follow-up actions based on the issues and recommendations mentioned in the ruling, including checking whether the existing framework and specific action plan of the Aadhaar project exist.

Violation of the unconstitutional behavior and misconduct pointed out by the Constitutional Review of the Supreme Court, and extensively listened to public opinions and carried out rectification and promotion of the project.