MSTT welcomes unique ID card project

MUMBAI, INDIA: The security intelligence body, Micro Secure Think Tank (MSTT), welcomed the appointment of Nandan Nilekani as the head of the national unique identification card project by the Government of India.

While interacting with the media here on Tuesday, MSST said it would come out with a series of position papers on the identity card project in future course.

“MSTT whole-heartedly support the unique ID card plan. However, with the population size of over 1.1 billion, a project of such high magnitude cannot be accomplished in days or months. We believe a time span of three to five years would be very optimistic estimate,” said Vijay Mukhi, MSTT’s chairman and IT security expert.

Moreover, Mukhi appealed to the society and media to remain patient for next 3-5 years before passing out any judgments of success or failure because of project’s magnitude.

“We would like the nation to think of a national ID card project in a time span of around 10 years at the very least. We need to give the Indian government at 3-5 years before we criticize them for any failures,” he said.

MSTT requested the nation to stand by Nandan’s team with more time and patience to get things done right. “He has one of the most difficult jobs in the world and he needs all our support and advice.”

Interestingly, Mukhi discussed that the card should try to incorporate two key applications or features – one for saving lives and other for online voting.

He viewed the card with details such as blood group, reactions and allergies against medicines and other critical information would be highly significant, while saving people's lives in any emergency case. According to him, if the card provides critical health details to doctors, it offers more chance of saving lives and better treatment.

Pointing out that the smart cards may face security issues like hacking, Mukhi said the government should conduct international hacking conferences and offer a reward of a million dollar to the first group that can hack our cards.

“Actual cards’ prototypes should be given to hacking organizations across the world so that government could know how strong security is,” he suggested.

According to MSTT, there should be just one card that would act for various purpose and help the people on daily basis.

“We need a single card that replaces all other cards and useful for various purposes, but for that we should use the best of technologies. We being late to start compared to other countries, there’s a great advantage for India in terms of using latest and most advance technologies and applications for smart cards,” said Dr. P Sekhar, MSTT’s executive member.