BELIEVE card supporters presented it as necessary for immigration reform but many opposed it. “We pointed out that a biometrics ID system would be expensive, intrusive and ineffective, and requiring such an ID card would fundamentally transform the information demands the US government places on its citizens,” said Michael Froomkin, a professor of law at Miami University. By contrast, Aadhaar has been designed as a single, universal, digital identity number that any registered entity, whether public or private, can use to “authenticate” an Indian resident. Anyone who has lived in India for 182 days can enroll in Aadhaar for proof of identity, while only citizens and those authorised to work in the US can obtain a Social Security Number. In the United States, there are very few services offered by any government that allows private companies to connect with a government database and extract private citizen data.592 The Social Security Administration has set up a system known as Consent Based SSN Verification (CBSV).
- Techno-Utopianism, (A Techno-Utopian strongly believes that technology allows mankind to make social, economic, political, and cultural advancements and that technology’s impacts as extremely positive.) the predominant stance of UIDAI, iSPRIT and India Stack proponents, does not address some of the real security risks.
- At the end of every quarter, employers send the government income taxes that they withhold from their employees along with the name and SSN.
- The research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.
- Aadhaar collects biometrics, which include the scan of all fingerprints, face and the iris of both eyes.
Aadhaar authenticates a person. The Social Security Number does not.
Given privacy concerns over the use of Social Security Numbers, governments have passed several laws and orders since 1996 to restrict and limit its use and collection. In contrast, the Aadhaar project functioned without a legal framework for seven years since it was launched by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009. It was run under an executive order, which meant Parliament had no oversight over it. In a foreword to a Credit-Suisse report, he noted that the use of Aadhaar by the financial sector could open up a $600 billion business opportunity.
India’s Unique Identification project is the world’s largest biometrics-based identity programme. Initially, the project had a limited aim – to stop theft and pilferage from India’s social welfare programmes by correctly identifying the beneficiaries using their biometrics. But now, the use of Aadhaar is expanding into newer areas, including business applications.
India, like the United States, has a KYC requirement driven by international requirements mandated by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)589 that put these requirements in place after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The original design of the UIDAI database would permit residents to do authentication of their name and address. The bank would then send it to the UIDAI which would send back an affirmative or negative answer to whether it matched. While this design is commonly used to preserve individual privacy, it also limits the amount of information that leaves the database.
- BELIEVE card supporters presented it as necessary for immigration reform but many opposed it.
- The Government’s social security and welfare expenditures are a substantial portion of the official budget and as well as the budgets of social security bodies, and state and local governments play roles in developing and implementing social security policies.
- Aadhaar project involves collection of biometric data which includes fingerprints, face and iris of eyes, whereas SSN captures demographic data.
- In March 2016, the National Democratic Alliance government passed the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill, bypassing the Rajya Sabha – a move that was widely criticised.
- New York and West Virginia have statutes that limit the use of the Social Security Number as a student identity number.
Why Do We Need Social Security
In August 2017, Supreme Court’s nine-judge bench unanimously ruled that privacy is a fundamental right because it is intrinsic to the right to life. Social Security Number and Aadhaar Number are core to how the respective systems work but the way the number is seen and how the designers of the programs orient around it is quite different.
Employment Enrollment and Use
I hope that this paper provides a starting point to understand the key differences between the U.S. and Indian systems and made clear to readers from both countries about how the systems work. Since it is uncommon in everyday life to have one’s SSN information checked by businesses, banks doing large numbers of transactions with people require a different license to participate in this system. UIDAI and its leadership have a culture of operating just beyond or just within a legal and regulatory framework. Two books about the story of the creation of Aadhaar have been written by journalists.543 Both document how the project did not have a legal or regulatory basis for six years between 2009 and 2016 and operated with a startup culture. They describe how the UIDAI leaders pushed to build out Aadhaar despite this legal limbo.
You know India’s Aadhaar is a 12-digit number & the SSN is a 9-digit number. But how else are these two different?
The out-patients service is provided through ESI dispensaries, IMP Clinics and Employer Utilization Dispensaries (EUD) In-patient services are provided through ESIC/ESIS Hospitals and through empanelment with tie up private hospitals. There are 1384 service dispensaries under ESI scheme all over the country and 1224 IMPs. In patient services are provided through a chain of 151 ESI hospitals spread across the country which includes 36 directly run ESIC hospitals & 115 State ESI hospitals with total bed strength of around excluding beds reserved in State Govts. The provision for Super specialty services is mainly through tie-up arrangements with private hospitals numbering more than 1000 across India. The strategy for implementation has been evolved and the allotment of the Social Security Number has begun with the entire activity being carried out in smaller phases for effective data collection. The criteria considered for the allotment of SSN include the centralized control of Uniqueness, ensuring the least manual intervention during allotment and near 100% Uniqueness accuracy levels.
As of January 2017, over 111 crore Indians have an Aadhaar number, the government had announced. Increased digitization of records in the 1960s drove the need for common reference systems across government agencies and within the private sector, and they chose the SSN as a way to do this. Existing mental models of how identity and identification systems work are based on government registries for births, deaths, and marriages where events are what is ssn number in india recorded on paper in a ledger book and certificates issued.
While it has provided numerous benefits in terms of transparency and accessibility to government schemes, it also faces significant challenges related to privacy, data security, and exclusion. However, it is seen as a critical step in modernizing India’s public and financial systems, especially in ensuring that benefits reach the right individuals in an efficient and timely manner. Employees’ State Insurance (abbreviated as ESI) is a social security and health insurance fund for Indian workers. The fund is managed by the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) according to rules and regulations stipulated in the ESI Act 1948. This fund is managed by the ESI Corporation (ESIC) according to rules and regulations stipulated there in the ESI Act 1948, which oversees the provision of healthcare and cash benefits to the employees and their family.
This means that the UIDAI has a record of all of the places where a person authenticates their identity, and this information is kept in Aadhaar’s logs for six months. The Authority retains the authentication data for six months, and archives it for five years. It also requires the requesting entities – both public agencies and private companies – to maintain the logs, including the Aadhaar number, for two years, and then archive it for five years, and even longer in case of a court order. From food rations to marriage certificates, entrance exams to train ticket concessions, mobile phone cards to banking, Indians are now being asked to produce a 12-digit Aadhaar number to access both government and private sector services.
Integrated Child Development Services
What we overlook as internationals is the importance of it and how you can be prone to identity theft, if you do not take care of SSN properly. But in 1977, the Carter administration clarified that while it may used to be verify whether an individual had the legal permit to work, the Social Security Number could not serve as an identification document. During this period of economic recession in the US, the Roosevelt government launched the “New Deal”, a series of programmes to provide relief and employment to the poor. Below are some of the measures undertaken at the state level for social security and welfare purposes in India. Under article 24, paragraph 2c38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a party,39 India has committed to yielding “adequate nutritious food” for children.
Various private companies have been granted a special license for $5,000 USD to connect to the government agency to do this type of check (CBSV). How did the United States move from public outcry against a National Data Center to developing actual laws and regulation that helped citizens accept the same data being collected by discrete agencies to guard against information sharing between agencies? While India adopted the use of Aadhaar across several agencies to deliver services, the U.S. was slower to move in that direction with the SSN, but did get there eventually. Enrolling people in more than one program or system at once is multi-context enrollment. Individuals getting a driver’s license must proactively choose to be enrolled in this second and very different system. A special process pushes data from the driver’s license registration process over to the government agency that manages the state-level voter list.
They can enable the constructive engagement of citizens with their government, but can be used by the state in ways that cause great harm. In the contemporary landscape, SSNs are allocated randomly, a departure from the prior systematic approach. Pre-2011, SSNs adhered to a structured formula, incorporating specific elements that held significance. The transition to randomization enhances identity security and prolongs the efficacy of the existing system. An Aadhaar Bill was introduced in 2010 but it was rejected by a parliamentary committee over legislative, security, and privacy concerns. In March 2016, the National Democratic Alliance government passed the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill, bypassing the Rajya Sabha – a move that was widely criticised.
However with increasing migration, urbanization and demographic changes there has been a decrease in large family units. However, information and awareness are the vital factors in widening the coverage of Social Security schemes. The State bears the primary responsibility for developing appropriate system for providing protection and assistance to its workforce.
