BiometricsUsing biometrics to protect India’s one billion people raises security, privacy concerns

The cutting edge of biometric identification — using fingerprints or eye scans to confirm a person’s identity – is not at the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. It is in India.

India’s Aadhaar program, operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and created to confirm the identities of citizens who collect government benefits, has amassed fingerprint and iris data on 500 million people. It is the biggest biometric database in the world, twice as big as that of the FBI. It can verify one million identities per hour, each one taking about thirty seconds.

A Stanford University release reports that the program unnerves some privacy advocates with its Orwellian overtones, and the U.S.-based Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized it as a threat to privacy.

Many developing countries, however, see biometric identification (ID) as a potential solution for millions of citizens who don’t have any official and fraud-resistant ID. The Indian government distributes $40 billion a year in food rations, but fraud is rampant because most people lack proper ID. Analysts estimate that 40 percent of India’s food rations never reach the people they are intended to help. Indeed, a new study of initial results from India’s biometric program found that it both reduced corruption and was popular with beneficiaries.

India is not the only developing nation to explore biometric strategies. The Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, reports that seventy nations have some sort of biometric program.

Now a Stanford business professor is proposing a way to make India’s program far more accurate. Lawrence Wein, a professor of management science, applies mathematical and statistical modeling to solve complex practical puzzles.

In health care, Wein has analyzed strategies to optimize food aid in Africa and to mitigate the toll of pandemic influenza. In homeland security, he has developed strategies that the U.S. government has adopted for responding to bioterrorist attacks involving smallpox, anthrax, and botulism.

Wein’s interest in biometrics started almost a decade ago, with his analysis of fingerprint strategies used by the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT program for nonresidents entering the country. That analysis influenced the government’s decision to switch from a 2-finger to a 10-finger identification system.

For Indian officials, the big practical challenge has been to make the program more accurate without getting bogged down when used by a billion people.