TNN | Updated: Mar 26, 2018, 07:57 IST
VOICES OF DISSENT: Anupam Saraph, e-governance expert, speaks at the discussion on ‘Aadhaar: State and Citizen’ at NIT-C on Sunday
KOZHIKODE: Noted legal and IT experts, who spoke at the panel discussion on ‘Aadhaar: State and Citizen’ on Sunday, have raised serious concerns about security of Aadhaar data, breach of privacy of people and even possible citizen profiling by the government in the future. The panel discussion was held at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NIT-C).
Usha Ramanathan, a legal expert who has been at the forefront of the opposition to the Aadhaar project, said Aadhaar was first presented before the people as a card that would benefit the marginalized sections. Now, it has become a means to exclude people, she said.
“Coercion has become an integral part of this project. Absence of consent has been a necessary part of such coercion and there is no plan anywhere for people to exit from the database,” she added.
Anupam Saraph, e-governance expert, said that his RTI inquiries with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) have revealed that the biometric data of an individual with the authority is not unique.
“UIDAI has admitted that the biometric data of an individual does not pull up a unique record from the database. It implies that there is no way in which we can use the biometric as a criterion for deduplication of the database and that Aadhaar cannot guarantee that it has no multiple IDs or duplicates. Also, when I asked through RTI if UIDAI certifies the identity, address, age, residential status of people issued with Aadhaar card, I was told that there was no official with the UIDAI who certifies the data which is contained in the card,” Saraph said.
Anivar A Aravind, founder and executive director of the Indic project, said that the revelations of data breaches involving Cambridge Analytica have raised new concerns over the security of UIDAI data. “The state is a trusted entity and it is collecting data from people using the trust it has among the citizens. Part of the collected data is handed over to corporates using e-KYC and already there have been many instances of misuse of Aadhaar e-KYC verification,” he added.
The discussion was held as part of I-Ink literary festival held as part of the Ragam festival, which concluded at NIT-C on Sunday.