Aadhaar case | Need to balance national interest and privacy: SC Dwayne Harmon25 January 2018, 03:30
FacebookTwitterGoogle+Emailapp_net Justice Chandrachud said that the issue, then, was how the data is utilised and not how it is collected. "Even where a person is availing of a benefit, subsidy or service from the state, mandatory authentication through Aadhaar (without an option to use an alternative mode of identification) violates the right to informational privacy", he said. Justice Chandrachud shot back, "Can we not make distinction of data collection and utilisation, and say the data collected shall not be used for purposes other than collected".
He said the question here is the purposes for which Aadhaar numbers can be used, its extent and proportionality if it had to be shared with private entities. Divan called the Aadhaar Act illegal and unconstitutional and said it would set up an architecture for surveillance and push the country towards an Orwellian dystopia, The Times of India reported.
Divan cited a number of judgments by the American courts as well as by European Court of Human Rights that had taken a dim view of the state collecting data on its citizens and intruding into their daily lives. The Supreme Court will be hearing a plea about the linking of Aadhar card, which the petitioners have said is "death to the civil rights" The bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra will be reviewing the petition. "Our personal data is anyway with private entities". It is worth noting that while the Data Protection bill is yet to be drafted, it is because of Aadhaar that people have gone to the court seeking the enactment of the data protection bill and the right to privacy. Divan had also criticized the power handed to the UIDAI to outsource the security of the database which he said had raised concerns about data breaches and about the possibility of India turning into a surveillance state. "Are we second-guessing a scheme which began in 2009, a well-considered scheme that an executive government has put in place, given that nothing is secure any more? You can not be oblivious to the fact that this collection began in 2009, not 2014", he said. He also wondered if the arguments would tantamount to suspecting the motives of the government. "Are we not transgressing here?" "Even the Pentagon (the headquarters of the USA department of defence) is not safe". Justice Chandrachud said that when private operators like Google tap the same types of information, Mr Divan replied that Google is not a state.
Newburgh Gazette
http://newburghgazette.com/2018/01/25/aadhaar-case-need-to-balance-national-interest-and-privacy/