Aadhaar muddle
PremiumThe Aadhaar authority is right to flag risks in letting unauthorized private entities access our personal data. Its solution of asking people to use a masked version of their number, though, has not been very effective
Will the Centre please make up its mind? After the Aadhaar authority put out a press release Friday warning against sharing photocopies of these identity cards, the IT ministry stepped in to withdraw the advisory. If the first spread panic, the second assured nobody. Aadhaar began as a voluntary scheme that is now the basis of a huge direct benefit transfer system. But questions of privacy loopholes refuse to go away. The Supreme Court in 2018 barred private entities from collecting Aadhaar details, but a later central ordinance skirted that restriction.
The idea began as a promise of a single ID to cut through a maze of bureaucracy whose notion of verification was duplication. That dream died swiftly. Today, everyone wants your Aadhaar, from banks and hotels to movie halls, and most citizens comply. The Aadhaar authority is right to flag risks in letting unauthorized private entities access our personal data. Its solution of asking people to use a masked version of their number, though, has not been very effective. What the government needs to do is plug all leaks and enact a data protection law that safeguards Aadhaar users. Anything less would be a credibility loss, like its recent flip-flop.