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Comment by ganeshkrishnan | Hacker News Reader

The slippery for aadhar card is on full display here. Few years back when this biometric identity card was introduced the government promised not to make it mandatory and now your cannot even shop online without this card.

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That's not true at all. You can buy anything shipped from within India without providing any documents. Amazon requires id/address proof only when the item is shipped from abroad, and that's only because customs requires it. And you have the options of: a) Providing the proof to the courier instead of amazon b) Providing a different address proof like voter id

If I'm being honest I would much rather have the government use something like a public biometric ID number that uses biometrics to validate the number rather than a broken SSN. I mean we already give our fingerprints to the DMV, and to the Customs/Immigration desk when coming back from an international flight.

In today's world not only is SSN vital to everyday life, it is also ironically one of the least secure means to establish ID. Having your SSN out in the public is potential financial ruin, and we generally need to hand out that number to various private organization, and individuals. And if the Equifax leaks are any indication SSNs are the weakest link in society.

> uses biometrics to validate the number

Biometrics can be trusted only as far as one can trust the source of the biometric info being provided. If you're getting biometric info as digital images, you'd have to be sure the images came directly from the person, only for this validation, and (if you want to use this validation for authentication) voluntarily.

The first two can be achieved only if the biometrics are given straight to the government's biometric verification authority, instead of whatever service needs to verify your id taking them and passing them on to the government. The latter is like giving your Facebook username and password to a third-party just so they can verify your Facebook account, the former is like an SSO service.

I have not seen a single SSO-like implementation of biometric Aadhaar verification in India.

And, of course, the third requirement cannot be fulfilled; biometrics are not passwords.

No. Biometrics aren't passwords. They're identification. Just as your picture identifies who you are.

As for the later part I feel that, again, the DMV already takes our biometric data, and I would think the same could apply for people in India. Someone is issuing passports, someone has to create valid means of identification. I mean how else is the government dispensing welfare, social aid, or making sure they're accounting for taxes properly.

Looking at how the Aadhar authentication process works indeed the biometric data is being validated by the government.

>I mean we already give our fingerprints to the DMV, and to the Customs/Immigration desk when coming back from an international flight.

I'm not sure what country you live in, but US citizens most certainly are not required to give their fingerprints to the DMV or Customs/Immigration when flying internationally.

There's more than 50 American DMVs, all the states plus DC and each of the territories have their own. Do you really think you know everything about all the requirements for an ID for all of them to make such a statement?

Which DMVs require fingerprints?

Please reread my post, I never claimed any did.

But anyway, off the top of my head:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/05/us/3-accused-of-murder-in-...

>The police later discovered that a thumbprint from the corpse did not match the one on Mr. Hanson's California driver's license.

Probably the country of California. (Or possibly Colorado, Georgia, or Texas - according to a quick google search.)

Not CA, MD, or HI, where supposedly this sort of thing would happen.

I recall my thumbprint being collected in CA (in the peninsula). It's been a few years. I remember it because I found it somewhat disturbing that they collected thumbprints. The CA DMV web site confirms this practice:

"Fingerprints, including thumbprint, are collected by DMV for added security to your driver license information"

-- https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/dl/how_info_shared

If your experience is different (I may be misreading your response), maybe it varies by office or it's been a while since you've registered in a DMV office in CA?

I stand corrected, I didn't have mine collected in early 2015. It appears the policy has changed.

I have never given Amazon my SSN.

That's disappointing. At least it sounds like an interesting edge that Indian shopping services can use to attract privacy conscious consumers... until the government requires its use everywhere.

TIL that slopes, positive or negative also need to account for the wind vector and the friction. Low friction and prevailing wind can allow one to slide uphill. It isn't the slope per-se but the energy in the system.

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