ADDED SECURITY LAYERS MUST BENEFIT ALL

THE UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION

Authority of India (UIDAI), in charge of issuing the 12- digit Aadhaar number to citizens, has added several new features to its digital identity platform. These include things like virtual ID ( VID) that masks your Aadhaar number and allows you to use a temporary 16- digit, randomly generated number for authentication purposes. Besides fingerprint and iris verification, UIDAI has also started allowing facial recognition. It took these measures even as the Supreme Court started its final hearing on a bunch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar Act, raising privacy and data protection concerns. Adding new features are fine as long as it makes lives easier without any privacy or security threat to individual beneficiaries and industry stakeholders. Winning the legal war should not be the only objective.