During the course of defending the legality of the Aadhaar biometric scheme before India’s Supreme Court this week, the chief lawyer for India’s central government argued that privacy is not a fundamental right bestowed by the country’s constitution. India’s government also asked the court to reconsider all Supreme Court judgments over the past two decades that defined privacy as a constitutional right. India’s central government made the argument in order to defend extending the use of the Aadhaar biometric system for security and crime-related surveillance. The government is currently piloting the use of the biometric scheme for airport security.
 
The Aadhaar program, implemented by the government’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), aims to provide all of the country’s residents with unique identification through biometrics, and is already being used for the delivery of services including, most recently, the payment of pensions. Currently, the service is used to identify citizens and provide various services for approximately 630 million people. The database is also actively used to monitor school attendance, issue natural gas subsidies to India’s rural poor, and to send wages directly to people’s bank accounts.