Comments on: Why The SIM Card Should Be India’s National ID Card

By: Rakendu Sharma

Rakendu Sharma — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:35:38 +0000

7.Voting over mobile phones , see the present questions raised about EVM machines which are just a calculator having one button for the voter and two buttons for the controller of the pooling booth an simplest machine, what will be the series of activities will the election commission need to take to make mobile devices secure for voting?
8.Seeing the present distribution of SIM cards in the India, will it be secure to distribute NID based SIM cards, I don’t think so.
9.Who will pay the bills of SIM cards for the poor masses who are still fighting for there one day meal?
10.What will happen to CDMA customers and vendors, what will be there role?
Thanks :)

Rakendu Sharma

By: Rakendu Sharma

Rakendu Sharma — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:34:49 +0000

Hi to all the contributors to the post,

I too have some doubts about NID on SIM:-

1.Do we have connectivity (telecom) in each part of the India?
2.The amount of overhead it will bring to present weak low bandwidth connectivity.
3.Mobile itself a complex device to operate; each vendor providing its own combination of keys and this will amount to more difficulties for the illiterate masses in India,
4.There are places in India where there is no electricity how will they recharge there mobiles?
5.A country like us which still lacks in providing its every citizens bare minimum necessities, will be very proud to handle them mobile set , isn’t that irony?
6.How can the biometric, pictorial data’s can be read or updated via mobile, does the existing mobile handsets have this capabilities or on the start of project government will be replacing the mobile phones with new capable mobiles,

countinued….

By: Shyam

Shyam — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:44:43 +0000

You cannot force any body to have mobile phone and atleast government cannot afford subsidy on Mobile phones.

By: Shyam

Shyam — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:41:26 +0000

Its a bad thought, to vote using SIM which has NID. As people will overtake the villages and can force people for favorable voting.

By: Rajarathnam

Rajarathnam — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:29:08 +0000

As a bare minimum any ID card should contain visual information such as UID Number, Photo, Name, Address, etc about the person holding it. However, what visual information need to be printed is debatable and careful consideration is required. For example DOB, Blood Group, etc. Visual check is the first level of authentication of the card and its holder. Additionally the UID number can be printed as barcode which can be easily read by some PoS applications, payment at Cybercafe, Phone Bhooths, outlets where you need to give your name, address, etc.

By: Rajarathnam

Rajarathnam — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:29:08 +0000

By: Tapasvi

Tapasvi — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:18:54 +0000

Right. We have cryptography today and SIM identification on the network does go through 128 bit encryption. I liked the token concept though. Like a chain of responsibility where each link has knowledge only of the next link and nothing beyond that. That's also how Sicilian mafias operate too :) Caporegimes know only the underboss
and not "the Boss" :) thus keeping "absolute identity" a secret. Taking your example, there is an association between voter<->token and token<->candidate. token <-> candidate association is obviously stored in database for later retrieval as you mentioned. So, the key is to not store voter<->token association otherwise voter would again be voting with absolute identity. So, voter knows the token but "system" cannot trace the voter by the token.
This is the idea. SIM voting could be one implementation and there are other possibilities too. Underlying concept is essentially the same. Like I was saying other day to my lunch mate, algorithm to find right (optimal) size of disk block (so as to reduce fragmentation)
could be used to arrive at optimal number of chairs per table in a restaurant (having 6 chairs per table would leave some chairs unused on each table (internal fragmentation) and having 2 chairs per table would mean members of same group would have to eat apart (external fragmentation). Alas, I digress. Blame it on Friday night :)

By: Ram Banerjee

Ram Banerjee — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:05:40 +0000

A secret ballot is the cornerstone of democracy.
It is possible to separate the task of identification and voting. An electronic version of proving your identity to a polling officer, collecting a voting form and then voting is possible through an intermediate web site where you pick up a voting token and then vote at another (disassociated) polling web site.

Not only will this mean that you cannot vote twice but you can take a look at the final result and see if your vote (token id) was counted for the right candidate. We already have the cryptography in place to do this today.

By: Tapasvi

Tapasvi — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:27:57 +0000

If someone surveyed, I believe following two will top the list of reasons why people who don't vote do so:

- Not finding that election card which I kept so carefully 5 years ago
- Inertia against getting out of house and stand in queue at polling booth

Voting through mobile could solve both the issues.
Not to mention, Election commission can save considerable amount of money thourgh this approach.
Also, polling booth capturing and proxy voting will reduce too.

I really don't believe in anonymous voting. In the world of anonymous voting, there is no way to tell the difference between one person casting vote twice
and two people each voting once.

By: Tapasvi

Tapasvi — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:07:15 +0000

One of the reasons behind assigning ID to every Indian national is to help fight terrorism. Using SIM Identity ensures ease of tracking. Within a matter of minutes government can track where a particular identity holder is. While you could always fake the ID (no matter its a traditional plastic or smart card), you cannot fake the SIM – as there cannot be two identical SIMs active on the network simultaneously.

Someone here mentioned that children cannot be entrusted with mobile phones. Quite a valid remark. However, we already have Dual SIM phones technology. Considering a family of "ham do hamare do", all we require is a pair of dual SIM phones.

Come to think about it: In a family of three, I have two laptops at home, which would have sounded a ludicrous idea way back in 1943 when someone infamously said "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".

My two paises :)

Tapasvi