Chief of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Ajay Bushan Pandey, who convened the gathering, said executives from Microsoft Corp, Samsung Electronics Co and Google were non-committal to the proposal.
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India now wants Tech companies to open up their encryption to integrate Aadhaar card with the help of a government-funded lab. Millions of Indians are already using the Aadhaar card to access a varied range of facilities including banking.
It should be noted that India’s relationship with the global tech industry has become increasingly tensed.
In fact, Apple chose to skip the meeting with Aadhaar chairman Ajay Bhushan Pandey, although representatives from Google and other tech companies gave him a patient hearing. But once their systems are embedded with Aadhaar encryptions, manufacturing companies will lose their hold over the ability to track users online. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation and US VISIT visa programme use similar technology to respectively track criminals and foreign visitors, no other country has taken the concept as far as India. Aadhaar is the world’s largest such programme; as of April this year more than one billion people had signed up, or about 83 per cent of the population.
While the acts relate to issued Aadhaar cards in India are kept on modifying each time, a new set of guideline pushed by the Indian Government has come to the front line.
Considering the fact that Aadhaar has already received a legal backing, Govt. can actually enforce its usage. Aadhaar card that started out as a unified identity program for the Indians had run into a fair share of trouble with people pointing over the privacy concerns. With fingerprint sensors available on most smartphones these days, the government is looking at ways on how a smartphone could be used for identification and authentication purposes.
In another development, under the new regime of Aadhaar-based transactions, tech-based companies like Apple and Google have been reportedly approached by the Government to make their phones and operating systems synced with Indian registration, encryption and security technology.
At present, Indian authorities are asking politely. Fresh from battles with Washington over encryption, Apple, Google and other USA tech companies are less likely to compromise without a fight. That could change. Earlier this year New Delhi mandated that, starting in 2017, all mobile phones sold in India must have a panic button women can push when attacked.
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The initiative is part of the country’s biometric identity program, Aadhaar that kicked off in September 2010, and has been made popular by the Narendra Modi-led government collecting biometric information from all Indian citizens and storing the digitized data in a centralized database.
