Aadhaar concerns will persist even after SC verdict

Data protection in the context of Aadhaar is far too serious an issue to be settled with a Twitter challenge. The TRAI chairman’s intention may have been noble, but the effect has been quite unsettling. The fact that it took a big hacker—‘ethical’ or not—to take on the onus of proving that security firewalls around citizen’s personal data can be breached does not comfort us about the digital netherworld. Who will break into what virtual safehouse—as a sport, or for profit, or something more diabolical like destabilising a sovereign nation—is not material now.

This is not even getting into the terrain of whether the hackers actually broke security firewalls or picked up the chairman’s personal details (PAN card, bank account, phone numbers) through a simple Google search. It’s all just too troubling. The Supreme Court is now about to pronounce on the petition challenging the Aadhaar Act without the benefit of listening to a long, systematic study. It has brusquely refused to take on board the findings of the 10-member Justice Srikrishna Committee report on data protection merely on the grounds that its hearings are over, and the judgment already reserved. 

After a year-long interaction with experts, Justice B N Srikrishna is a concerned man. He has flagged off many core and attendant issues relating to data collection, protection, privacy and consent, as it appears in the interface of individual citizens, the government and the private sector. Set up by the government, the panel neither had the mandate nor the locus standi to question the large-scale and intrusive data collection the government itself is engaging in—its logic, premises or desirability.

The panel has suggested a stringent legal framework and a Data Protection Authority of India (another behemoth) to exert vigil over the often shady data analytics and transactions that surround us. The SC, however, would be giving a ruling merely on whether at all a citizen can be forced to part with personal details, to be mined by banks, mobile companies, the Amazons, Facebooks and Twitters of the world.