AADHAR – IDENTITY CARD OR PRIVACY CRISIS

By:Gaurav Nandan Tripathi

With the increased fervor in the debates around the right to privacy, Aadhar Card has a separate story of its own. Introduced by the UPA government as a card for national identity, and a means to avail subsidies; it has become more and more important in the current Modi government. Today, all the basic services like bank accounts, phone numbers, subsidies, e-wallets, passport etc., everything has to be linked to your aadhar card. So basically, it’s the most important identity proof in India, which carries all your details, right from where you live to how much you earn, what you buy, where you go and almost every documented action has a record in your 12 digit aadhar number.
The government at centre has now made aadhar mandatory for almost all the
services which we avail from the state as its citizens. But at the same time it raises a lot of concerns which have been primary issues of contention in recent times. As your aadhar contains every information of yours, it has to be highly secure in terms of data security, so that your details remain safe. Also, if in anyways that security is breached, it will create huge privacy problems throughout the country. The government through the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has issued statements many times assuring the people that aadhar is safe and it is not possible to breach the security as its data is encrypted quite strongly. However, all the news and rumors of the data breach has been coming from third party websites only, like some unsecured government websites or through private agencies. The main database of aadhar is told to be highly secure, and it is very hard to breach such level of security. In fact Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and society said “In this aspect, the issue in facebook and aadhar is similar. In both the cases there was no breach of database, but it was a third party that acted as the weakest link”. Thus, it remains to be seen that when the government ensure that the weak third party links are tightened so that such
breaches don’t occur. Because, with such breaches, the privacy and security of the citizens of this nation is at stake.

http://mavericktimes.in/2018/01/08/aadhaar-aadhaar-less-complete-story-aadhar-uidai/