The government is going to launch a new Aadhaar application in the coming months to allow for Aadhaar-based identity checks, according to a Moneycontrol report. These developments come as part of a closed-door webinar that the government organised on November 18. The report suggests that the app will allow individuals to selectively share Aadhaar attributes. For example, sharing your name and photograph when entering an event or sharing age details when trying to confirm that you are over 18 at a cigarette shop. The report suggests that the app-based authentication feature is distinct from the face authentication that banks and government departments currently use.
The app may also include an offline proof-of-presence system that uses facial verification directly on the user’s phone, without needing to connect to UIDAI’s servers. Unlike current Aadhaar authentication methods that require server connectivity, this new feature works locally on the device and provides the receiving organisation with a signed confirmation that the individual was physically present at the time of verification.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will also reportedly come out with regulations to support expanded authentication processes supported by the app. These regulations will allow businesses to become online verification seeking entities (OVSEs) and will establish how Aadhaar credentials will be shared and stored. Officials at the webinar suggest that through the app, businesses can avoid the technical and financial challenges of becoming an Aadhaar user agency.
Some context to Aadhaar face authentication:
This development comes after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) allowed private entities to use Aadhaar-based face authentication for sectors including hospitality, healthcare, credit rating bureaus, e-commerce players, and educational institutions in February this year. The webinar and the use cases discussed in it, such as hotel and lodge check-ins, hospital admissions, and student verifications during exams and event entries, all seem to implement the permissions MeitY provided in February.
Besides allowing Aadhaar-based facial verification in the private sector, there has also been a push to use Aadhaar-based facial authentication for processing high-value financial transactions. In October, UIDAI’s Deputy Director General Abhishek Kumar Singh argued for the same during a discussion at the Global Fintech Festival in Mumbai. Singh mentioned that the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) is already in the process of implementing this system, urging banks to onboard facial authentication via Aadhaar as well. These initiatives indicate an effort towards expanding the scope of Aadhaar use.
Concerns with the facial authentication:
As MediaNama mentioned in 2018, when UIDAI launched facial authentication, this service posed a range of privacy and security concerns. One of the chief ones is that biometrics change over a person’s lifetime. If the Aadhaar system is matching a person’s face to the photograph in the database, there would be situations where the authentication process would fail. This is especially important to account for, considering that UIDAI started collecting information for its database in 2009.
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Picture this: You were 15 when you applied for an Aadhaar card and got your face scanned. As you reach 17, your facial structure changes, your skin clears up, and your teeth are straightened because you used braces at the time. In such a situation, a facial scan may not identify you accurately, given how much you have changed in the past two years.
“Facial features in adolescence change significantly in a short period of time. In fact, FRT is historically consistently exclusive of (or biased against) certain groups like women or people with darker skin tones. This bias can further lead to the exclusion of certain people appearing for the exam,” Medha Garg, a Freedom Innovation Fellow at the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), told MediaNama earlier this year. Her comment was in the context of UIDAI’s use of facial recognition during the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG) examination.
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