The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has termed French security researcher Elliot Alderson’s claims as irresponsible for questioning the Aadhaar system. The researcher had claimed gaining access to details of 20,000 Aadhaar cards by simply searching on the internet. UIDAI sent out 11 tweets, regarding safety and security of the Aadhaar system. One of these said people were advised not to confuse with such reports, which were far from the truth and intended to spread misinformation on a robust identity system. Alderson on March 10 tweeted, “I will play a game tonight: How many #Aadhaar card I can found in 3 hours? Note: All the cards must be available publicly.” “In less than 3 hours, I found more than 20,000 Aadhaar cards available publicly on the web. Repeat after me: #Aadhaar is secure, #Aadhaar is secure...,” one of the tweets by Alderson said. UIDAI said Aadhaar was like any other identity document and therefore, never to be treated as a confidential document. If anybody publishes someone’s personal information such as Aadhaar card, passport, mobile number, bank account number or photograph without authorisation, he can be sued for civil damages by the person whose privacy right is infringed.
The security of Aadhaar has been questioned on various instances. A few months ago, reports emerged about a few people selling Aadhaar data for a fee. The Authority, however, maintained there had not been any breach of the biometric database, which remained totally secure, with the highest encryption. Mere display of demographic information could not be misused without biometrics, UIDAI had said.
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