For God’s sake stop comparing India's Aadhar with USA's Social Security Number

Being an Indian, you may take pride. Because your Aadhar card is a part of the world’s largest biometrics-based identity programme. The meek and humble 12-digit number during the UPA government was made to stop fraud and pilferage from India’s social welfare programmes. Move to 2017! The Modi government is gradually making it mandatory for every citizen to use our Aadhar cards from buying railway tickets, filing tax returns to marriage certificates, entrance exams mobile phone cards to banking.

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Good enough! So Aadhar has a different objective altogether. Aadhar card has your iris and finger print stored in a central database. Given the not-so-strong cyber security laws in the country, you often think how safe your banking transactions are; given the fact even your telecom operator store has your Aadhar number. But then someone would just poke their nose into your business and inform that even the USA has social security number to keep a count on the citizens. That’s it! You need to step out in war footing and make this person understand how India’s Aadhar cannot be compared to the USA’s Social Security Number.

Here’s why:

Structural difference between Aadhar and SSN
You know about Aadhar card very well. But what about the USA’s Social Security Number or SSN? In 1936, SSN was a 9-digit number that was used by the government to track ac citizen’s income and ensure the social benefit on the basis of the same. That’s quite much like Aadhar of ours. Gradually more government agencies and incorporates started storing the records of SSN. In 1961, just like Aadhar, the Internal Revenue Service of USA started using SSN for identifying taxpayers.

Until then, there was no legal framework that would prevent any credit card company to judge a person basis their SSN. However in 1977, under Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, it was decied that SSN cannot be used as an identification document. Rather, it should only be used as a legal permit to work.

On the Social Security website of the USA government, under the Social Security Testimony Before Congress, it is clearly mentioned: “The card was never intended to serve as a personal identification document – that is, it does not establish that the person presenting the card is actually the person whose name and SSN appear on the card.”

Now contrast this with our Aadhar, which is a single digital identity number and you will find that any government and private bodies may use the same as a identity card to authenticate you as an Indian citizen. Also, anyone who has stayed in India for 182 days can apply for enrolling oneself for Aadhar card. However SSN is only given to the US citizens who have permit to work in the country.

The process of registering people on Aadhar was executed through private enterprises known as enrollers who operated freely without any government supervision at the field level. The qualifications needed to become an enrolment agency were quite low and nobody was from a recognized name.

Your biological data is stored in Aadhar
In Aadhar, from finger print to iris, everything is stored. However in SSN, the US government didn’t collect finger prints. To support their logic, the Social Security website reads: “The use of fingerprints was associated in the public mind with criminal activity, making this approach undesirable.” SSN doesn’t even contain any photograph for that matter. In 2007, there were talks to include these details to act against terrorism, but the country who have experienced terrorist attacks in its worst form and often behave cynical on this matter actually went against it.

“A biometric identifier, such as a fingerprint, can be an effective and highly accurate way to establish the identity of an individual, but it can also facilitate a much higher degree of tracking and profiling than would be appropriate for many transactions,” said Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center a research organisation, while the hearing on the Use and Misuse of the Social Security Number before the Subcommittee on Social Security Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives.
“The problems that will arise when biometric identifiers are compromised are severe. What will happen at the point that your biometric identifiers no longer identify you?” he added.

Aadhar is linked to central database
However SSN is never seeded. “Department of Homeland Security programs shall not collect or use an SSN as a unique identifier; rather, programs shall create their own unique identifiers to identify or link information concerning an individual,” reads the Privacy Policy Guidance Memorandum of the Homeland Security in the USA.

SSN cannot be used openly by private companies

SSN is required by private businesses on two cases:

(1) you are involved in a transaction in which the Internal Revenue Service requires notification, or (2) you are engaged in a financial transaction subject to federal Customer Identification Program rules.

However for Aadhar, even the mobile store that operates from a small kiosk would ask you to authorise for a sim card or the travel agent booking your railway tickets or the bank agent insisting you for a credit card.