IISD in the news

Does The Data Security Risk Of A Billion Indians Handing Over Biometric Information Outweigh The Benefits?

"But some say Nilekani grossly overestimates the savings. “It’s a lie—most of the de-duplication that the government claims has been dealt with without the use of Aadhaar,” says agricultural economist R. Ramakumar from Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences. List-based de-duplication—getting officials to “sit with the local data to identify who came from the same address”—was reported to be 15 to 20 times more effective than Aadhaar-based de-duplication, Ramakumar says, citing a 2016 study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canada-based research organization."

September 3, 2017