Court Upholds Legality of World’s Largest Biometric Database
India’s supreme court has upheld the legality of the government’s Aadhaar system, the world’s largest biometric database containing the personal information of more than a billion Indians.
The five-judge bench of India’s top court decided the benefits of the system outweighed the risks to privacy – but pruned back larger ambitions for the scheme by laying down stringent new limits on how
Aadhaar information can be used. Private businesses or individuals have been banned from requesting an individual’s Aadhaar details, meaning the 12-digit number cannot be a requirement for services such as opening a bank account or establishing a mobile phone connection.
But the court permitted the government to make Aadhaar details mandatory to register a tax file number, file annual returns and, significantly, to claim welfare payments – a key purpose of the scheme but also one of its most contentious features.
The justices also struck down a so-called “national security exception” that allowed investigative agencies to access a person’s data without a warrant. The decision on Wednesday settles several major questions that have hung over Aadhaar in the decade since it was first proposed by the previous Congress government and then vastly expanded by current Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a 567-page judgment, the court sought to strike a balance between privacy concerns and what the scheme’s evangelists say is its radical potential to streamline welfare payments by reducing duplication and other leakages.