India’s national ID system: Danger grows in a privacy vacuum

India is juggling demands and proposals for at least three national data surveillance projects of vast scope. This article focuses on the unique identification (UID) number, which it is proposed will be allocated to India’s 1.2 billion people, with 600 M UIDs to be allocated by 2015. Draft legislation to create the Authority which will administer the UID contains few protections for privacy or other liberties. They are needed because there is otherwise a privacy vacuum in Indian law. The Bill leaves most of the details of the demographic and biometric information which will be required to be included Regulations, and imposes no controls on which organisations can require UIDs, or what they can do with them. This article focuses on the planning documents for the UID, and the Bill, to argue that India may be building an identification system that puts peoples’ liberties at risk, and does so in a way which will be largely out of control of democratic or judicial restraints on such a powerful use of information technology.