The Aadhaar Data Leaks

Digital activists and privacy advocates across the country felt partly vindicated when the Supreme Court in September 2018 struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which allowed private business entities to use Aadhaar to authenticate the identities of people.

- Kaushik Deka

This was a qualified restriction of Aadhaar’s remit because the judgment also upheld the constitutional validity of Aadhaar for the purposes of identifying beneficiaries of government welfare schemes. The wisdom of this ruling has been questioned by critics who maintain that government and quasi-government agencies do not have the technological wherewithal to ensure the safety of citizens’ data. While there has been no reported direct breach of the Aadhaar central database, companies and government departments that require the provision of Aadhaar numbers are weak links.