A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns

India’s legislators are on Wednesday debating a law that would allow the government to collect biometric and demographic information from people in return for distributing to them government benefits and subsidies.

A number of legislators and civil rights activists are concerned about the absence of strong privacy safeguards in the legislation and a provision in the law that allows the government to access the data collected for national security reasons. There is also concern that such a large centralized database of personal information could be hacked and critical information leaked.

Activists are also wary that the program could be extended by the government to make it a mandatory digital ID card for people in the country. Already some telecommunications services and financial services companies use the biometric identity as an optional way for verifying customers.

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