Modi's report on aadhar card privacy

A report on global digital IDs brings Aadhaar’s limitations, risks in focus

In an innocuously titled report

on “Decentralized Finance and Digital Assets” released last Saturday, 

global rating major Moody’s Investors Service has flagged some uncomfortable home truths about India’s ambitious digital identification (ID) programme for residents, Aadhaar. 

Scale of aadhar

1 As the world’s largest digital ID programme with biometric and demographic details of over a billion residents, Aadhaar stands out for its scale. 

2 single entity controls identifying credentials - But at a broader level, the agency has red-flagged security and privacy risks from “centralised” digital ID systems such as Aadhaar, where a single entity controls identifying credentials. 

3 Moody’s, which has mooted / suggest decentralised ID systems 

that give users more control over their data, has also lent weight to worries about the efficacy of Aadhaar’s biometric-based authentication systems to verify identities. 

It resulted

🌺 service denials, 

🌺and the reliability of biometric technologies,

🌺 especially for manual labourers in hot, humid climates, is questionable,” it said. 

While this observation is of relevance amid the government’s push

to switch all payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to an Aadhaar-based payment system, 

it echoes the concerns raised ever since its launch under the United Progressive Alliance regime.

 government has manifested in the 12-digit number

becoming mandatory for almost all welfare benefits to weaker sections 

as well as activities such as 

🌺opening bank or 

🌺provident fund accounts, 

🌺securing telephone connections and 

🌺remitting taxes. 

Its use, backed by the expansion of access to no-frills bank 

What is no frill account in banking? 

These are savings accounts that don't need any minimum balance month after month. The account holder gets access to internet banking, debit card and access to ATMs across the country with 0 balance. As the name suggests, these accounts don't have any unnecessary rules or 'frills

Frill accounts and mobile phone connections, has indeed enabled the direct transfer of benefits to millions in welfare schemes and weeding out / ending ghosts and middlemen. 

But there have also been instances of people being excluded from basic services

1 for lack of an Aadhaar or labourers and senior citizens struggling to confirm their fingerprints and retina scans to prove they exist.

2 Cag report 

An audit of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India released last year,

 had flagged lapses that 

🌺jeopardise privacy

🌺 and compromise data security,

🌺along with flaws in enrolment processes leading to duplication and faulty biometrics.

 India has pushed for digital public infrastructure like the one built around the edifice of Aadhaar, as a means for service delivery in G-20 nations and beyond. 

Having appointed a part-time chief to the UIDAI last month after four years, the government must seek an honest review of, and course correction in the Aadhaar programme, before expanding its linkages further, be it for electoral rolls, private entities or MGNREGA payments.