A big win for privacy in India

India’s Supreme Court has ruled in a unanimous decision that privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 of India’s constitution. This is a landmark decision for India, and it was decided by a full bench of nine judges.

The decision comes at a time when India’s national biometric ID program, Aadhaar, has been deeply criticized for its lack of fundamental privacy protections. Since 2010, the program has moved from from voluntary to mandatory, and has profoundly expanded in uses. Aadhaar data has also been widely breached in a number of high- profile security lapses.

The Supreme Court privacy decision, resulting from an initial case against the invasiveness and overreach of the Aadhaar database of 1 billion Indians, will very likely set a changed course for Aadhaar. The court’s decision did not specifically test the constitutionality of the Aadhaar program; that will be the next step in the legal process as a five-judge Supreme Court bench sits to test the constitutionality of the Aadhaar program against what is now a cornerstone precedent of a right to privacy in India.

WPF has written about the permutations of this Supreme Court case, and Aadhaar, extensively. Next week we are releasing a substantial scholarly research paper on Aadhaar and privacy.

Additional Reading:

Full text of decision: http://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/supreme-court-rules-privacy-is-fundamental-right-here-s-full-text-of-the-judgment/story-Wheiu7B8nbgbqtJYT1KzkO.html

Economic Times http://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/supreme-court-rules-right-to-privacy-as-fundamental-right/articleshow/60203260.cms

Background on earlier interim decision of Supreme Court in this case: ( links to full text of interim decision)

https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2015/08/indias-court-issues-interim-orders-in-national-biometric-id-card-case-aadhaar/

Early concerns about Aadhaar, Foreign Policy Magazine:
https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2013/04/blog-pam-dixon-writes-about-indias-national-id-card-in-mayjune-issue-of-foreign-policy-magazine/

Posted August 24, 2017 in Biometrics, Digitial Identity, Facial Recognition, ID Ecosystem, Identity, Region: India

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.