IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015 - 12

Indian context. Indian conditions,
the report read, "are unique in two
ways: larger percentage of population is employed in manual labour,
which normally produces poorer
biometric samples. Biometric capture process in rural and mobile
environment is less controllable
compared to the environmental
conditions in which western data is
collected." It also found that if the
way biometrics is captured is deficient, the "false acceptance rate"
could be over 10%. The committee "strongly recommended that
carefully designed experiments and
proper statistical analysis under
pilot should be carried out, to formally predict the accuracy of biometric systems for Indian rural and
urban environments" [14].
As for the iris, it is technology of
recent vintage, and, "compared to
fingerprinting, iris capture is less
studied and less standardised."
So, the report tentatively suggested combining multiple biometric
modalities, in this case fingerprint
and iris. That was about all the
committee was able to determine.

Biometric Exceptions
in a National Program
as Big as India
Pursuant to this report, in February
2010, the UIDAI issued a "notice
inviting applications for hiring of
biometrics consultant" to assist in
"proof of concept of biometric solutions for UIDAI project." This document is a startling statement of
the state of ignorance of the UIDAI,
while they had already decided that
they would adopt biometric deduplication and authentication. The
consultant would have to "assess
the biometric de-duplication accuracy that can be achieved in the
Indian context."
The U.S. National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) "has
spent considerable efforts over the

past 10-15 years in benchmarking
the state-of-the-art extractor and
matching technology for fingerprint,
face and iris biometrics on the western population," the invitation document read. "While NIST documents
the fact that the accuracy of biometric matching is extremely dependent
on demographics and environmental
conditions, there is a lack of a sound
study that documents the accuracy
achievable on Indian demographics
(i.e., larger percentage of rural population) and in Indian environmental
conditions (i.e., extremely hot and
humid climates and facilities without air-conditioning). In fact, it went
on, "we could not find any credible
study assessing the achievable accuracy in any of the developing countries. UIDAI has performed some
preliminary assessment of quality
of fingerprint data from Indian rural
demographics and environments
and the results are encouraging. The
"quality" assessment of fingerprint
data is not sufficient to fully understand the achievable de-duplication
accuracy." The consultant was given
six months to lead the UIDAI from
this state of ignorance to profound
knowledge about biometrics. At that
stage, the focus was on enrolment.
The question of what would happen
when people would have to be identified by their biometric markers was
deferred to a later date [15].
The study was done between
March and June 2010. On July 17,
2010, the Economic Times reported that "missing biometrics" was
confronting the UID project. The
millions of agriculture, construction, and manual workers would
have their fingerprints worn down.
Corneal scars, corneal blindness,
cataract resulting from nutritional
deficiencies and prolonged exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet rays
were likely to jeopardize iris data.
The Director General of the UIDAI
reportedly admitted that they had
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

no estimate of how many people
this would affect - they expected
it to be a "small number." "We are
dealing with a large country and
complex issues. We have to work
within these limitations," he is
reported to have said. We now know
that despite the complex issues
at hand, the authorities moved on
regardless, to collecting biometrics
while making claims of uniqueness.
The "UID enrolment proof-ofconcept (PoC) report" was finally
uploaded on the UIDAI website in
February 2011, about five months
after UID enrollment began roll out
[16]. In a report that is gloriously
vague and hazy, there is one statement that puts a question mark on
the whole exercise: "The goal of the
PoC was to collect data representative of India and not necessarily
to find difficult-to-use biometrics.
Therefore, extremely remote rural
areas, often with populations
specialising in certain types of work
(tea plantation workers, areca nut
growers, etc.) were not chosen. This
ensured that degradation of biometrics characteristic of such narrow
groups was not over-represented
in the sample data collected." The
number of people in the sample
studies to see if de-duplication
worked was 40 000, and this did not
include those who were not seen as
representative of India! The report
then maintains a deafening silence
on the subject of what will be done
for "biometric exceptions" - for people for whom neither fingerprints nor
iris work.

Risks Associated with
Trailblazing: Failure, Legality,
and Surveillance
The UIDAI would be hard put to
term this a scientific study. There
is no authorship, the complexity
of the population is ironed out by
excluding them from the sample,
the evidence is sketchy, and the
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MARCH 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2015