AFFIDAVIT IN SC SAYS AADHAAR INSECURE AND UNNECESSARY

NEWDELHI: Almost 10 days before a five -judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court begins a final hearing in the Aadhaar case, an affidavit has been filed in the top court assailing the government’s 12-digit biometric identification project.

Filed by writer Kalyani Shankar Menon, it relies on affidavits of experts in the field of food security, data protection and RTI replies to make out a case that Aadhaar is based on flawed technology and is leading to enormous data breaches.

The affidavit asserts that “Aadhaar is an insecure, unreliable, unnecessary and inappropriate technology project which is being foisted with coercion on the most vulnerable section of Indians and is threatening their constitutional and legal rights and entitlements every day...”

Attacking the government’s contention that Aadhaar will go a long way in prevention duplication of PAN cards, the affidavit states that the problem of PAN duplication has been overstated. “There are only 10.52 lakh duplicate PANS among PANS given out to nearly 29 crore individuals. This works out to less than 0.4%...” it said.

The affidavit also alleges that the government’s insistence of ‘seeding’ or the practice of incorporating the Aadhaar number into several databases furthers the risk of identity theft. “Reports by privacy and security researchers indicate that such breaches have already affected 135 million Indians, the affidavit claims. It also highlights the failure of Aadhaar-related biometric authentication because of electricity or internet related failures or because machines are unable to read / scan biometrics correctly.

THE AFFIDAVIT ALSO ALLEGES THAT SEEDING THE AADHAAR NUMBER INTO SEVERAL DATABASES FURTHERS RISK OF IDENTITY THEFT