SC red flags fear of Aadhaar data misuse

NEW DELHI: A leak of Aadhaar data can influence the outcome of an election, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday, continuing its exploration of the matter amid the massive controversy over the illegal use of Facebook data in the US elections.

Last week, the court had expressed concerns about the possible misuse of data of 1.3 billion Indians. It drew a sharp response from the Aadhaar authority UIDAI, who said: “Aadhaar data is not an atom bomb”.

“The real apprehension is the data available can influence the electoral outcome of a country... whether democracy can survive if Aadhaar data is used to influence the electoral outcome,” said Justice DY Chandrachud, who was part of a five-judge bench hearing a clutch of 27 petitions that questioned the validity of Aadhaar, flagged privacy issues and data leak.

The focus on the illegal use of data by third parties has sharpened following the Facebook data misuse case, which became public last month. Disgraced British firm Cambridge Analytica had used data for psychological profiling on behalf of Donald Trump. The matter became a big political issue in the country, with the Congress and the BJP trading charges of data misuse.

The court, which asked UIDAI for an account of its data protection procedure, on Tuesday said the “problems are not symptomatic but real”. Asking what the “nature of the safeguards” in the absence of a data protection law was, Justice Chandrachud said, “We can’t have a blinkered view of reality, because we are going to lay down the law which will affect the future”.

Last week, the court asked if biometrics collected by the registering entities share the information with others once it obtains consent. Denying the possibility, the UIDAI said the moment the data is submitted; it is encrypted. “So there is no leakage or sharing of data,” it added.