Skynet, But For Welfare: Automating Social Services Is Killing People

from the our-hands-are-clean-said-the-gov't-since-it's-just-robots-doing-the-work dept

We've talked before about the over-reliance on tech to do certain jobs that cannot be simplified to the sum of mathematical parts. The criminal justice system is starting to turn over sentencing to algorithms -- something that seems like the smart thing to do but removes judicial and prosecutorial discretion from the mix, leaving defendants with the unpalatable option of challenging software they're never allowed to examine.

Police departments are also moving towards predictive policing. Relying on historical data, cops are hoping to head off future crimes by allocating resources to areas where crime appears to be more likely to be committed. Sounds good on paper, but in reality, all it does is reinforce biases and push law enforcement to treat everyone in targeted areas as criminals. If the data being fed in reflects biased policing, crunching the numbers even harder isn't going to erase that. It's only going to reinforce it. And, again, suspected criminals aren't able to access the data or software that puts them in law enforcement's crosshairs.

A certain amount of automation is expected as government agencies seek to streamline public services. The problem isn't necessarily the tech. It's the removal of human interaction. As has been stated here frequently, moderation at scale is impossible. So is automated governing. Automated processes are as prone to failure as the people overseeing them. But when you decide software is going to do almost all of the work, those who need the assistance of other humans most are cut out of the loop.

Citizens looking for government assistance have grown accustomed to jumping through red tape hoops. Now, the hoops are inaccessible, but still must be jumped through. The most marginalized members of society are given URLs instead of contact names and numbers when many of them have no reliable access to the internet or a computer. A new series by The Guardian shows the human cost of going paperless. It's happening all over the world, and it's literally killing people.

The most disturbing story comes from Dumka in India. Here, we learn of the horrifying human impact that has befallen families as a result of Aadhaar, a 12-digit unique identification number that the Indian government has issued to all residents in the world’s largest biometric experiment.

Motka Manjhi paid the ultimate price when the computer glitched and his thumbprint – his key into Aadhaar – went unrecognised. His subsistence rations were stopped, he was forced to skip meals and he grew thin. On 22 May, he collapsed outside his home and died. His family is convinced it was starvation.

That's the worst case scenario. But there is plenty of ugliness in between. Governments aren't looking to defense budgets or law enforcement agencies to make cuts. Instead, they're adding to their bottom lines by pursuing citizens they think have screwed the government. Another process being automated is governments' attempts to collect alleged overpayments of social services funds. There's a statute of limitations on most debt, but software is being used to resurrect ancient debt governments feel they're owed. This is resulting in the destruction of people's lives and finances as they find themselves unable to challenge these automated determinations.

In Illinois, the Guardian has found that state and federal governments have joined forces to demand that welfare recipients repay “overpayments” stretching back in some cases 30 years. This system of “zombie debt”, weaponized through technology, is invoking fear and hardship among society’s most vulnerable.

As one recipient described it: “You owe what you have eaten.”

It's not just "zombie debt." It's also "robodebt." The determinations of owed debt are made by automated processes. The collection process is also automated, separating those suddenly facing possibly undeserved clawbacks from the human assistance they need to determine whether or not the claim is valid. Bureaucracies have always been faceless. With the addition of cold calculations, they've weaponized this facelessness to deter citizens from pushing back against a decision-making process composed of 1s and 0s. This, too, is linked to a rising human cost.

Compare and contrast the public statements with reality. Here's how the UK government is pitching its transition to automated governance:

“We are striking the right balance between having a compassionate safety net on which we spend £95bn, and creating a digital service that suits the way most people use technology,” said a DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] spokesperson. “Automation means we are improving accuracy, speeding up our service and freeing up colleagues’ time so they can support the people who need it most.”

If this sounds like a positive development, it's only because you haven't seen it in action.

[C]laimants have warned the existing automation in UC’s “digital by default” system has already driven some to hunger, breakdown and even attempted suicide. One described the online process as a “Kafka-like carousel”, another as “hostile” and yet another as a “form of torture”. Several said civil servants already appeared to be ruled by computer algorithms, unable to contradict their verdicts.

The same thing is going on in Australia. The government's embrace of "austerity," combined with its fondness for automating social services and debt collection processes has resulted in a world of hurt for the many Australians unable to challenge automated determinations or connect with actual humans willing to help them through the process. Asher Wolf's Twitter feed is an invaluable resource for these issues, detailing the fallout of automated social assistance programs all around the world.

It's not that all automation is bad. It's that automation without strict oversight or human control isn't making anything better for the most vulnerable members of society. When governments pay millions to let machines make decisions affecting humans, humans almost always seem to come out on the losing end. Legislators may proudly display charts showing incremental gains in efficiency, but few are willing to discuss the constituents they've sacrificed on the altar of automation. No system is perfect, but one that relies more on math than human discretion isn't an improvement.

Filed Under: aadhaar, algorithms, automation, criminal justice, india, law enforcement, police, social services

Indian Supreme Court Rules Aadhaar Does Not Violate Privacy Rights, But Places Limits On Its Use

from the mixed-result dept

Techdirt wrote recently about what seems to be yet another problem with India's massive Aadhaar biometric identity system. Alongside these specific security issues, there is the larger question of whether Aadhaar as a whole is a violation of Indian citizens' fundamental privacy rights. That question was made all the more pertinent in the light of the country's Supreme Court ruling last year that "Privacy is the constitutional core of human dignity." It led many to hope that the same court would strike down Aadhaar completely following constitutional challenges to the project. However, in a mixed result for both privacy organizations and Aadhaar proponents, India's Supreme Court has handed down a judgment that the identity system does not fundamentally violate privacy rights, but that its use must be strictly circumscribed. As The New York Times explains:

The five-judge panel limited the use of the program, called Aadhaar, to the distribution of certain benefits. It struck down the government's use of the system for unrelated issues like identifying students taking school exams. The court also said that private companies like banks and cellphone providers could not require users to prove their identities with Aadhaar.

The majority opinion of the court said that an Indian's Aadhaar identity was unique and "unparalleled" and empowered marginalized people, such as those who are illiterate.

The decision affects everything from government welfare programs, such as food aid and pensions, to private businesses, which have used the digital ID as a fast, efficient way to verify customers' identities. Some states, such as Andhra Pradesh, had also planned to integrate the ID system into far-reaching surveillance programs, raising the specter of widespread government spying.

In essence, the Supreme Court seems to have felt that although Aadhaar's problems were undeniable, its advantages, particularly for India's poorest citizens, outweighed those concerns. However, its ruling also sought to limit function creep by stipulating that Aadhaar's compulsory use had to be restricted to the original aim of distributing government benefits. Although that seems a reasonable compromise, it may not be quite as clear-cut as it seems. The Guardian writes that it still may be possible to use Aadhaar for commercial purposes:

Sharad Sharma, the co-founder of a Bangalore-based technology think tank which has worked closely with Aadhaar's administrators, said Wednesday's judgment did not totally eliminate that vision for the future of the scheme, but that private use of Aadhaar details would now need to be voluntary.

"Nothing has been said [by the court] about voluntary usage and nothing has been said about regulating bodies mandating it for services," Sharma said. "So access to private parties for voluntary use is permitted."

That looks to be a potentially large loophole in the Supreme Court's attempt to keep the benefits of Aadhaar while stopping it turning into a compulsory identity system for accessing all government and business services. No doubt in the coming years we will see companies exploring just how far they can go in demanding a "voluntary" use of Aadhaar, as well as legal action by privacy advocates trying to stop them from doing so.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometric, id, identification, india, privacy

Software Patch Claimed To Allow Aadhaar's Security To Be Bypassed, Calling Into Question Biometric Database's Integrity

from the but-it's-ok,-we-already-blacklisted-the-50,000-rogue-operators-that-we-found dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about what seemed to be a fairly serious breach of security at the world's largest biometric database, India's Aadhaar. The Indian edition of Huffington Post now reports on what looks like an even more grave problem:

The authenticity of the data stored in India's controversial Aadhaar identity database, which contains the biometrics and personal information of over 1 billion Indians, has been compromised by a software patch that disables critical security features of the software used to enrol new Aadhaar users, a three month-long investigation by HuffPost India reveals.

According to the article, the patch can be bought for just Rs 2,500 (around $35). The easy-to-install software removes three critical security features of Aadhaar:

The patch lets a user bypass critical security features such as biometric authentication of enrolment operators to generate unauthorised Aadhaar numbers.

The patch disables the enrolment software's in-built GPS security feature (used to identify the physical location of every enrolment centre), which means anyone anywhere in the world -- say, Beijing, Karachi or Kabul -- can use the software to enrol users.

The patch reduces the sensitivity of the enrolment software's iris-recognition system, making it easier to spoof the software with a photograph of a registered operator, rather than requiring the operator to be present in person.

As the Huffington Post article explains, creating a patch that is able to circumvent the main security features in this way was possible thanks to design choices made early on in the project. The unprecedented scale of the Aadhaar enrollment process -- so far around 1.2 billion people have been given an Aadhaar number and added to the database -- meant that a large number of private agencies and village-level computer kiosks were used for registration. Since connectivity was often poor, the main software was installed on local computers, rather than being run in the cloud. The patch can be used by anyone with local access to the computer system, and simply involves replacing a folder of Java libraries with versions lacking the security checks.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government body responsible for the Aadhaar project, has responded to the Huffington Post article, but in a rather odd way: as a Donald Trump-like stream of tweets. The Huffington Post points out: "[the UIDAI] has simply stated that its systems are completely secure without any supporting evidence." One of the Aadhaar tweets is as follows:

It is because of this stringent and robust system that as on date more that 50,000 operators have been blacklisted, UIDAI added.

The need to throw 50,000 operators off the system hardly inspires confidence in its overall security. What makes things worse is that the Indian government seems determined to make Aadhaar indispensable for Indian citizens who want to deal with it in any way, and to encourage business to do the same. Given the continuing questions about Aadhaar's overall security and integrity, that seems unwise, to say the least.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometrics, breach, india, privacy, security

Mozilla's Open Letter To Expert Committee Drafting India's First Data Protection Law Slams Aadhaar Biometric Identity System

from the the-lizard-wrangler-speaks dept

Techdirt has been covering India's monster biometric database, Aadhaar, since 2015. Media in India, naturally, have been on the story longer, and continue to provide detailed coverage of its roll-out and application. But wider knowledge of the trailblazing identity project remains limited. One international organization that has been working to raise awareness is Mozilla, home of the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client.

Last May, an opinion piece entitled "Aadhaar isn't progress -- it's dystopian and dangerous", by Mozilla Executive Chairwoman and Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker and Mozilla community member Ankit Gadgil, appeared in India's Business Standard newspaper. In July 2017, Mozilla released a statement on the Indian Supreme Court hearings on Aadhaar. A blog post in November pointed out that the Aadhaar system is increasingly being used by private companies for their services, something Techdirt covered earlier. Similarly, after it was revealed that anybody's Aadhaar details could be bought for around $8 each, Mozilla issued a statement saying "this latest, egregious breach should be a giant red flag to all companies as well as to the UIDAI [Unique Identification Authority of India] and the [Indian] Government."

Following the creation of a committee to draft India’s first comprehensive data protection law, Mozilla has now paid for an open letter to appear in The Hindustan Times. It was written by Baker, and co-signed by 1,447 Mozilla India community members. Although the letter welcomes the work being carried out by the committee of experts, it criticizes Aadhaar for its many failings, and points out some serious omissions in the committee's report on data protection:

The current proposal exempts biometric info from the definition of sensitive personal information that must be especially protected. This is backwards, biometric info is some of the most personal info, and can’t be "reset" like a password.

The design of Aadhaar fails to provide meaningful consent to users. This is seen, for example, by the ever increasing number of public and private services that are linked to Aadhaar without users being given a meaningful choice in the matter. This can and should be remedied by stronger consent, data minimization, collection limitation, and purpose limitation obligations.

Instead of crafting narrow exemptions for the legitimate needs of law enforcement, you propose to exempt entire agencies from accountability and legal restrictions on how user data may be accessed and processed.

Your report also casts doubt on whether individuals should be allowed a right to object over how their data is processed; this is a core pillar of data protection, without a right to object, consent is not meaningful and individual liberty is curtailed.

On a Web page called "Key challenges and the way forward", Mozilla calls on the Indian government to "pause further roll out of Aadhaar until the major problems with Aadhaar have been addressed." It also has a further suggestion:

The Indian government must release Aadhaar as true open source software rather than use language of open source, and encourage the use, development, and adoption of open source as a pillar of the Aadhaar system

Of course, you might expect an open source foundation like Mozilla to say that, but nonetheless it's good to see what is at heart a software organization engaging with global problems that affect huge numbers of people in this way. Others should do the same.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometrics, database, india, privcy
Companies: mozilla

Want Anybody's Personal Details From Aadhaar, India's Billion-Person Identity Database? Yours For $8

from the Aadhaar-admin-accounts-also-available-on-request dept

We've been writing about the world's largest biometric database, India's Aadhaar, since July 2015. Over 1.1 billion people have now been enrolled, and assigned an Aadhaar number and card, which represents 99.9% of India's adult population. There are currently around 40 million authentications every day, a number that will rise as Aadhaar becomes inescapable for every aspect of daily life in India, assuming it survives legal challenges. That scale necessarily entails a huge infrastructure to handle enrollment and authentication. So it will comes as no surprise to Techdirt readers that it turns out you can obtain unauthorized access to the Aadhaar system very easily, and for very little cost. As the Indian newspaper The Tribune revealed:

It took just Rs 500 [about $8], paid through Paytm [an Indian online payment system], and 10 minutes in which an "agent" of the group running the racket created a "gateway" for this correspondent and gave a login ID and password. Lo and behold, you could enter any Aadhaar number in the portal, and instantly get all particulars that an individual may have submitted to the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), including name, address, postal code (PIN), photo, phone number and email.

What is more, The Tribune team paid another Rs 300 [$4.75], for which the agent provided "software" that could facilitate the printing of the Aadhaar card after entering the Aadhaar number of any individual.

Given the repeated assurances by the UIDAI that the Aadhaar database was completely secure, this is big news, and led to some breathless damage limitation by the Indian authorities on Twitter. The UIDAI explained that: "Some persons have misused demographic search facility, given to designated officials to help residents who have lost Aadhaar/Enrollment slip to retrieve their details"; and: "There has not been any data breach of biometric database which remains fully safe & secure with highest encryption at UIDAI and mere display of demographic info cannot be misused without biometric". Although it may be true that this is not a biometric data breach, it nonetheless reveals a serious vulnerability in the system's design, and on a vast scale. According to the original article in The Tribune, more than 100,000 "village-level enterprise operators", hired to help with Aadhaar enrollment, have been offering this kind of unauthorized access to the database. In fact, the problem seems to be even more serious than simply providing login credentials to thousands of people. Here's what another Indian site discovered:

Following up on an investigation by The Tribune, The Quint found that completely random people like you and me, with no official credentials, can access and become admins of the official Aadhaar database (with names, mobile numbers, addresses of every Indian linked to the UIDAI scheme). But that's not even the worst part. Once you are an admin, you can make ANYONE YOU CHOOSE an admin of the portal. You could be an Indian, you could be a foreign national, none of it matters -- the Aadhaar database won't ask.

Even if biometric data is not involved, it's hard to see how UIDAI could claim that these aren't breaches of the database, or deny that the entire Aadhaar system is seriously compromised. It's almost inevitable that the security of an important database system will be defeated eventually in some way, since the rewards are by definition so high. The fundamental problem with Aadhaar is its underlying intent -- to create a single, giant database with key personal information about a billion people that can be accessed very frequently and very widely. That's never going to be safe, as the inevitable future breaches will confirm.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, database, hacked, id, identity, india, privacy

India's Supreme Court Rules Privacy Is A Fundamental Right; Big Ramifications For The Aadhaar Biometric System And Beyond

from the constitutional-core-of-human-dignity dept

In a move that will have major implications for the online world in India and beyond, nine Supreme Court judges have ruled unanimously that privacy is a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. As part of a decision spanning 547 pages (pdf) they declared:

Privacy is the constitutional core of human dignity.

The case was brought as a result of a legal challenge to India's huge biometric database, Aadhaar, whose rise Techdirt has been charting for some years. A post on the EFF Web site explains the legal background, and why the Supreme Court decision was necessary:

The right to privacy in India has developed through a series of decisions over the past 60 years. Over the years, inconsistency from two early judgments created a divergence of opinion on whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right. Last week's judgment reconciles those different interpretations to unequivocally declare that it is. Moreover, constitutional provisions must be read and interpreted in a manner which would enhance their conformity with international human rights instruments ratified by India. The judgment also concludes that privacy is a necessary condition for the meaningful exercise of other guaranteed freedoms.

Now that a solid constitutional foundation for privacy in India has been affirmed, other judges will proceed with examining the legality of Aadhaar in the light of the many relevant points made in the ruling:

The Aadhaar hearings, which were cut short, are expected to resume under a smaller three- or five-judge bench later this month. Outside of the pending Aadhaar challenge, the ruling can also form the basis of new legal challenges to the architecture and implementation of Aadhaar. For example, with growing evidence that state governments are already using Aadhaar to build databases to profile citizens, the security of data and limitations on data convergence and profiling may be areas for future privacy-related challenges to Aadhaar.

A case challenging WhatsApp's new privacy policy that allows content sharing with Facebook is also certain to be affected by the ruling, but the ramifications go far beyond Aadhaar and the digital world. As an analysis in the Economic Times notes, the judgment could lead to the decriminalization of homosexuality in India, as well as affecting laws that restrict a person's right to convert to a different religion, and state-level rules that impose restrictions on animal slaughter. The breadth of those possible impacts underlines just how epoch-making last week's decision is likely to prove.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometrics, india, privacy

India Opening Up World's Largest Biometric Database For Commercial Applications, Despite Inadequate Privacy Protection

from the India-Stack-attack dept

Techdirt has been following India's construction of the world's largest biometric database, called Aadhaar, since July 2015. Concerns include the fact that what was billed as a voluntary system has been morphing into a compulsory one, and evidence that Aadhaar simply can't cope with real-life biometrics. Undeterred, the Indian government wants to expand the system even further by opening it up for use by companies, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

The Indian government has gathered digital-identification records, including fingerprint impressions and eye scans, of nearly all of its 1.2 billion citizens. Now a government-backed initiative known as "India Stack" aims to standardize ways to exchange the data digitally to facilitate the transfer of signatures and official documents that citizens need to get jobs, make financial transactions or access government services.

By allowing developers to incorporate use of government identification records in their commercial websites and apps, the initiative envisions Indians -- with mobile phones in hand -- using iris and fingerprint scans to sign up for insurance, invest in mutual funds, receive health-care subsidies and verify their identity for school examinations.

In itself, there's nothing wrong with this approach. Indeed, it has many benefits, notably making it easier for people to deal with India's bureaucracy, and helping to fight corruption. But those advantages could be compromised if privacy is neglected. And here the Indian government is sending all the wrong signals:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has delayed a new bill that would bring India's privacy laws more in line with those of major European nations. Meanwhile, the government has questioned a constitutional right to privacy in pleadings before the Indian Supreme Court.

Without adequate privacy protection, the system seems ripe for abuse, both by unscrupulous companies targeting hapless consumers, and by state organizations, which might use it as a powerful surveillance tool. If the Indian government wants to become a world leader in using biometric-based digital identity for its citizens, as the Wall Street Journal article suggests, it should make crafting effective privacy protection laws a priority.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometrics, india, privacy

India's High-Tech Billion-Person Aadhaar Identity System Can't Cope With Real-Life Biometrics

from the well,-that's-awkward dept

We first wrote about India's Aadhaar system, which assigns a unique 12-digit number to all Indian citizens, a year ago. Mainstream media are finally waking up to the scale of the project, as this article in the Guardian indicates:

The Aadhaar scheme was launched in 2009, under former prime minister Manmohan Singh, but the current government, led by Narendra Modi, is credited with rolling it out across India. According to the latest figures in May 2016 from the Unique Identification Authority, more than a billion people have been given Aadhaar numbers. Within the next few months, the details of every person in India will be in the government database.

To allay privacy and surveillance concerns, the Indian government insisted initially that Aadhaar was to be purely voluntary. But as Techdirt reported earlier this year, it's quite clear that the government's intention is to get everyone on to the Aadhaar system, and to embed it ever-more deeply in daily life. The principal argument for doing so is that it will make India's bureacracy more efficient, help fight corruption, and make it easier for citizens to receive government support:

The data collected by the Aadhaar centres will be stored in a network of servers in the southern city of Bangalore. Information from the database can then be circulated to different authorities. The ID system, according to the government, will prevent welfare fraud and ensure subsidies and social security schemes are reaching the right people.

All laudable goals, but an article in The Times of India reveals the reality. In the Indian State of Rajasthan, 14 million people have dropped off the Aadhaar system. A major problem is that one of the key biometric identifiers -- fingerprints -- is proving unusable for precisely the groups of people that Aadhaar was supposed to help:

Hard manual labour flattens fingerprint patterns on the palm. Chances of the machines detecting them are really dim.

These patterns also fade with age. "I've never been a manual labourer, but at 70 the lines on my fingers are faint and the device never works with me too," says Aruna Roy of [the Indian social movement] MKSS.

Vaishali Devi of Kishangarh tehsil, Ajmer, complains she's been deprived of ration and pension for over three months. She was at the Jawab Do dharna in Jaipur for 20 days. With her was fellow villager Vanni Bai. For three months, she hasn't been able to collect her quota of supplies.

Another issue is that poor Internet connectivity makes it hard to check readings with the central Aadhaar databases in Bangalore, so many attempts are necessary before fingerprints are recognized, and the food rations can be given out. The good news is that there's an alternative approach:

In principle, the Unique Identity Authority of India, implementing agency for Aadhaar can issue a one-time password to the ration seeker's mobile phone if the system fails.

The bad news:

Many using the system can't afford mobile phones; some don't remember the number registered on their Aadhaar.

It sounds like getting India’s 1.29 billion population to use the Aadhaar system for routine daily transactions is going to be something of a challenge, to put it mildly.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, biometrics, identification, identity, india, national id, privacy

India's Attorney-General: Privacy 'Not A Fundamental Right'

from the I-am-not-a-12-digit-number dept

Last month, we wrote about attempts by the Indian government to make Aadhaar, the country's identity number system, mandatory. This was despite repeated rulings by the Indian Supreme Court that it should not be compulsory for government schemes. Last month, another application was made to the court, asking it once more to forbid the Indian government from requiring the Aadhaar card and a unique 12-digit identification number for its services. During the case, India's Attorney-General, Mukul Rohatgi, made the following remarkable assertion, reported here by Hindustan Times:

"[India's] Constitution makers did not intend to make right to privacy a fundamental right," Rohatgi told the bench, during the hearing of petitions opposing a government order that made the 12-number unique identification number mandatory, especially for seeking government welfare benefits.

As the site Scroll.in explains:

The Attorney General quoted two decisions in support of his proposition -- from 1954 and 1963. Those opposing his argument contended that these decisions had been overtaken by the constitutional jurisprudence that had since evolved.

But as well as his purely legalistic arguments, Rohatgi took another, very different angle, telling the court:

It should balance the petitioner's rights against those of the roughly 700 million people, whose subsidies and welfare benefits were dependent on the "fool-proof scheme."

Despite this emotional blackmail -- give up your privacy, or 700 million people will go hungry -- the Indian Supreme Court's interim order confirmed that:

It is not mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar card

and

the production of an Aadhaar card will not be a condition for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen.

However, the Supreme Court did allow the Aadhaar card and number to be used for a few specific government schemes: those for "distributing foodgrains and cooking fuel, such as kerosene." So perhaps people won't want for food or fuel even if campaigners continue to insist that privacy most certainly is a fundamental right, and that making Aadhaar mandatory would infringe upon it.

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Filed Under: aadhaar, inda, mukul rohatgi, national id, privacy, rights