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NEW DELHI – India's highest court ruled that the world's largest biometric identification database did not encroach on citizens' right to privacy, but required new limitations.
The country's controversial Aadhaar program uses photos, finger and eye scans and has already recruited more than a billion people. It has sparked an intense global debate about the extent to which a democracy should be able to collect the personal data of its citizens and how this data can be used, shared and protected.
Wednesday's Supreme Court decision was a response to the multiple challenges of the system.
A panel of five judges ruled in a 4-1 decision that the program is constitutional and helps the poor by streamlining welfare payments. According to the 1,448-page document describing the court's decision, being in the database should not be required to use cell phones, open bank accounts, or to be admitted to school. For a while, it was unclear whether such organizations could force people to provide Aadhaar numbers.
"This is a historic judgment," said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. "Everyone must understand, including Aadhaar's critics, that you can not defy technology or ignore it."
January 2017: The Indian government gives a unique identity card to each of its 1.2 billion citizens, creating the largest set of biometric data in the world. Photo: Karan Deep Singh / The Wall Street Journal
Aadhaar has provided an important means of proving identity to marginalized citizens in society, especially "those who are illiterate and live in abject poverty or homelessness," the court said. Nevertheless, "we must reconcile two competing fundamental rights, the right to privacy, on the one hand, and the right to food, housing and employment, on the other".
"It's a good judgment," said Parvesh Khanna, a Delhi-based lawyer and one of the leading plaintiffs in the case. "The government can use my data, but not private companies," he said.
Launched by the government in 2010, Aadhaar ("foundation" in Hindi) is an ambitious program to provide each resident with a unique 12-digit number related to fingerprints and eye scanners. More than 1.2 billion people, almost all of the population, have been enlisted, according to India's Unique Identification Authority, which manages Aadhaar. This makes it the largest program in the world.
In 2012, Mr. Khanna and a retired judge asked the Supreme Court to block the project as a violation of the right to privacy. Dozens of other petitions followed; the court heard all the cases together.
The government argues that the identification system will enable the country to enter the digital age by providing people with a reliable means of identification, many of which currently do not have. He has already curbed corruption in the distribution of fuel and food rations of the state, according to the government.
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of IT services titan in India
Infosys
Ltd.
who devised the program, puts the savings for the government at $ 13 billion up to now.
Aadhaar has been commended by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates for its innovative use of technology, and analysts have pledged to strengthen the digital economy in India by facilitating bank account creation and mobile connectivity. smartphones.
Wednesday's decision is "a great victory for the government," wrote Amit Malviya, head of information and technology for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata party.
Twitter
.
"This confirms the validity of Aadhar," he says, "does not infringe on the right to privacy" and "the theory of incident monitoring."
Critics have long attacked Aadhaar, calling it a case of government override that could lead to citizen surveillance and claiming that keeping the data in one place is a tantalizing target for hackers. Local media has reported instances of unauthorized access to the database, such as the connection details offered for sale and the use of pirated versions of the Aadhaar registration software that bypass the security measures. The government, however, says that all biometric data remains safe and can not be broken.
Some academics and activists also worry that some of the poorest citizens in the country, such as the homeless and the sick, have been deprived of public distribution of rations such as rice because of the fact that they are poor. they could not join the program. .
Wednesday's ruling indicates that these citizens should not be denied benefits.
"The richer city-dwellers are able to survive," said Reetika Khera, an economist at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, who studied the use of welfare distribution in rural areas of the country. "The ax fell on the poor"
'
Everyone must understand, including Aadhaar's critics, that you can not defy technology or ignore it.
"
Ms. Khera and her colleagues said they cataloged dozens of cases in which people died after seeing their benefits removed because they did not have the number of Aadhaars.
The decision comes as Indian policymakers debate the need to follow a centralized model like that of China, where local start-ups are hosted and authorities can access data from citizens or Western countries. protect him from the government.
As the prices of mobile data and smartphones go down – and millions of people connect to the digital world via Aadhaar – United States. companies ranging from
Walmart
Inc.
and
Amazon.com
Inc.
at
Facebook
Inc.
and Uber Technologies Inc. seek to dominate the world's last major untapped Internet economy. The research firm eMarketer says that the e-commerce market in India alone will be worth $ 33 billion this year, three times more than in 2015.
-Rajesh Roy contributed to this article.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell @ wsj.com and Krishna Pokharel at [email protected]
Corrections and amplifications
The panel of five judges ruled 4-1 in its decision on the biometric identification database. In an earlier version of this article, the distribution of Supreme Court judges was wrong (3-2).
