Can Big Data Fight a Pandemic?

摘要： The COVID-19 crisis has intensified the debate over big data and privacy. Governments are pulling together data from public and private systems in order to predict and counter the spread of COVID-19. But setting aside privacy protections in a time of crisis could lead to new, permanent norms. We asked Yale SOM’s K. Sudhir about the role of India’s nationwide identity system, Aadhaar, and the use of big data around the world.

One of the primary use cases for Aadhaar is the delivery of public subsidies with speed and efficiency without leakage through intermediaries. In the battle against COVID-19 in India, one of the most important tools the government has against stockpiling, food shortages, and hunger due to poverty is a robust food subsidy and monetary subsidy. It is absolutely critical to now deliver these subsidies with speed and efficiency, and Aadhaar is therefore an important tool in this fight.

The southern state of Telangana, which linked 100% of all legacy ration cards (used for traditional subsidized food distribution) to Aadhaar systems in 2016, has pledged to continue to use ABBA (Aadhaar based Biometric Authentication) for food and cash subsidy deliveries during the COVID-19 crisis. But nearly a quarter of the population has not tied their legacy ration cards to Aadhaar, so Aadhaar is still not ready for exclusive use in public distribution. To ensure all deserving receive subsidies in this crisis, many state governments, including Kerala, Delhi, and Jharkhand, have explicitly stated they would not require Aadhaar for authentication during the crisis; traditional ration-card identification can also be used.

Some have noted that fingerprint identification for Aadhaar can itself lead to propagation of infections. The state of Kerala therefore developed a one-time-password-based authentication method linked to ration card numbers to both ensure identification and minimize pilferage. Other states allow offline logging of transactions in books by linking to ration cards. Thus, different state governments are creatively adapting Aadhaar for the COVID-19 challenges.

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