The Indian government has embarked on an expensive project to provide smart cards for every citizen of the country. The cards will be based on photographs and prints of all ten fingers and contain much personal information such as education, job, earning and so on. We are told that this is to target the poor for financial help and prevent ineligible people from benefiting from such schemes. This will cut out corruption such as inflating employee numbers in government offices. What is not mentioned is how the information will be secured. There is nothing to stop civil servants from selling such information to enemies like Pakistan and terrorists will be able to travel across India with fake smart cards. If the cards fall into police hands the innocent person whose identity was stolen will be brutalised by the police. Is there going to be constant matching of prints against names for all the billion people of India? If not there is nothing to stop a migrant family getting one set of cards in, say, Delhi or Mumbai and then travelling to their village in UP to get another set. In a report called the Shadow in the Clouds researchers from the University of Toronto have shown that Chinese hackers called the Shadow Network have hacked into secret Indian government data including missile systems, Indian embassies abroad and information about government policies. If the Chinese can do it what is to prevent Pakis or anyone else from stealing vital information about identities. Finally, corruption in India is top down and this is not going to stop criminal politicians or uncivil servants from looting the exchequer. This will greatly increase the power of the government and maybe the first step towards dictatorship.