Until the mid-1700s, anonymity was an abnormality. We lived our lives in the small villages in which we were born. The local church might have had a chronicle of birth records, but rare was the need for identifying papers, for the majority of days were spent in the presence of familiar faces who knew your name, your history, your family. Your entire life.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Drawn by the allure of factory work, we moved into the city, and were joined by people whose villages carried names as alien as foreign nations. This unfamiliarity unhinged the trust that had underpinned both business and social transactions for centuries, leading to an increase in crime, poverty, and desperation.
Authorities were in desperate need of a way to recognise the tide of strangers moving into their territory, and monitor the criminal element. Drawings could only be so accurate, and branding had been outlawed.
It wasn’t until 1881 that a solution was found, when Alphonse Bertillon – a dejected and frustrated record keeper who spent his days transcribing descriptions of criminals in the basement of French police headquarters – discovered he could build a criminal profile by measuring 11 sections of the human body that remained the same regardless of changes in age, weight etc.
The Bertillonage system had its faults, but it sufficed until fingerprint analysis became widespread in the early 1900s.
Over the next century, biometric technology swiftly advance as the notion of the global citizen reared.
Today, that technology serves not only to make identification simpler, but to eradicate anonymity entirely.
India’s biometric database, Aadhaar (‘Foundation’) is one such example. Linking iris and finger scans to a randomised 12-digit ID number, Aadhaar isn’t the first database of its kind, but it is the largest, due in no small part to a decision to making registration mandatory for all 1.3 billion Indian citizens.
India’s Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, has attempted to deflect criticism by arguing that “right to body is not an absolute right”.
“You can have right over your body but the state can restrict trading in body organs, so the state can exercise control over the body.”
While it may seem ludicrous, Rohatgi’s argument carries with it the kind of terrifying precedent that holds up in court against all rational opposition.
Whether it does give the government the right to force all citizens to register remains to be seen, but for the millions of Indians who have no formal identification, or rely on welfare, there’s no choice but to comply.
An incredible 90% of the country’s population is now listed in Aadhaar. Most – as noted by Los Angeles Times – have registered out of fear of repercussions rather than hope of the benefits that the government promises the system will provide.
As is unsurprising in such situations however, myriad faults have sprung up in the system. Fingerprint scanners have broken, leaving people unable to access their pensions. Whole families have been left starving because of a spelling mistake.
Debates over an inevitable hacking attempt are so far theoretical, but human errors are rife. When Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni updated his details, an employee tweeted out his personal information. His is one of up to 130 million profiles that may have been leaked since Aadhaar went live, thanks to the incompetence of government workers who published them on unsecured servers.
“It’s become very clear that this is not a project about the poor,” Usha Ramanathan, a lawyer and anti-Aadhaar activist told LA Times. “The government’s ambitions have gotten greater over time.”
This is not an issue unique to India. 60 countries collect biometric data from citizens and travellers, including Israel, which recently followed in India’s footsteps by passing a bill making it mandatory for citizens to register in their database.
The desire of the powerful to identify has surpassed society’s need to identify. The end of anonymity is not the next logical step in the evolution of identification; it is a targeted attack on individualism, independence, and privacy. And it’s only just beginning.