Cool Application of Biometrics in India

In the rapidly advancing world, the issue of security is becoming a more and more pressing matter. Computer crimes and identity theft related crimes are becoming more rampant and apparent, requiring better solutions to cope with them. One of the proposed methods for solution for future high-technology security issues lies in the field of biometrics. Although still in major phases of development, biometrics is seen as a highly valuable initiative to one day replace present day security authentication practices due to its ideal concept of being virtually risk free and non-inaccurate.

Recently, one of the cool applications of Biometrics Verification came up in India when this technology was used by country’s universal ID (UID) program, Project Aadhaar.

The Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Aadhaar program will provide identity cards for that nation’s 1.2 billion citizens. When it is completed, the UID system will process hundreds of thousands of identity validation requests each second, against the world’s largest database of individuals. The UID will use multiple types of biometric data for identification, including retina scans, fingerprints for all 10 fingers, and multiple facial images. It’s a huge project, with an estimated cost of US$2.2 to US$4.4 billion.

To ensure that each person gets one and only one Aadhaar number it is necessary that the resident’s identity information is captured and matched against every other resident (1:N check) who have previously enrolled - This process is called de-duplication.

The good thing was that the total biometric enrollment time for each individual, on average, was a little over three minutes. Of this, iris enrollment took a little under a minute, and was not perceived to be excessively difficult either by the resident or the enrolling operator. Specifically, many blind people also had their iris images captured successfully.

In a report titled 'The role of biometric technology in Aadhaar enrollment', the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) stated that use of biometric technology is flawless.

Times of India Article