Demands for investigation into India's identity scheme after newspaper exposé

Indian citizens register for a unique identification card known as Aadhaar. (File photo/AFP)

NEW DELHI: Experts and opinion-makers in India have raised a big question mark over the Indian government’s ambitious Aadhar biometric identity scheme after an exposé by The Tribune newspaper showed how easy it is to breach confidential data and obtain citizens’ personal details.
Under the headline “Rs 500, 10 minutes, and you have access to billion Aadhar details,” the newspaper wrote on Jan. 3 that it “purchased” a service offered by anonymous sellers over WhatsApp that provided unrestricted access to details of Aadhar users.
The biggest ever financial data leak compromised 3.2 million debit cards of half a dozen banks in October 2016. In May 2017, Aadhar numbers, along with bank details of more than 100 million people, were leaked through government portals.
Aadhar is a 12-digit unique identity number issued by India’s statutory body, Unique Identification Authority of India, to all Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data. The main idea is to eliminate duplicate and fake identities. Started in 2010, the original idea was to use it as a tool to bridge loopholes in the government’s welfare scheme by eliminating fake claimants.
The incumbent Narendra Modi government, after coming to power in 2014, expanded the ambit of the project and made having an Aadhar card mandatory, asking people to link it with a host of services including mobile SIM cards, bank accounts, property transactions, and business deals.
Many rights groups have raised the question of privacy and surveillance under the new policy. Last year, the Supreme Court declared the Right to Privacy as a fundamental right and put on hold the linking of Aadhar to other services until the final ruling by a constitutional bench.
Talking to Arab News, Harish Khare, Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune, says that the government should have “a rethink and stop widening the scope of Aadhar. Linking it with every single transactional and other citizen detail is very dicey and dangerous.”
With the newspaper exposé, the debate about the safety of Aadhar data and the need to link it with all the vital services has revived again.
“It means that people’s personal identifiable information is accessible to someone who is not authorized to do that,” says Nikhil Pahwa, founder and editor of MediaNama, a premier source of information and analysis on digital and telecoms businesses in India.
An active campaigner for privacy rights Pahwa, talking to Arab News, underlines that “this is a very serious breach and a significant national security concern for India. This goes to show that there is a problem in the design of the Aadhar database, and the way it has been approached.”
He demands the “suspension of the Aadhar project.” Kiran Jonnalagadda, a co-founder of Internet Freedom Foundation, also calls it “a serious matter.”
“What worries me is the government’s reaction to the leakage of the data. It indicates that they don’t want to look at the loopholes. I really feel that Aadhar should be shut down and open audit should be done before it is launched again,” Jonnalagadda tells Arab News.
However, Sudhanshu Mittal of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party dismisses the idea of the abrogation of the Aadhar project.
“The leakage might be an aberration that can be rectified. Any system will have an unforeseen problem. We need identity for every citizen. It is critical, it is such a big help to all,” Mittal told Arab News.
Khare says that “unfortunately the government, instead of looking at the real issue and thanking us for pointing out the major lacuna in their project, is trying to intimidate us, but we remain unintimidated.”
He adds that “had I been a national security adviser, I would have immediately ordered a very high-power audit into what is happening and stop this idea of linking every bit of information with Aadhar.”