The Unique Identification Authority of India has deactivated Aadhaar numbers of over 2.5 crore deceased persons to prevent misuse of the identity document, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.
UPI has catapulted India into the forefront on the global digital payments landscape. Working hand in hand, the AePS payments system is making life easy for rural folks, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
If a citizen chooses not to use Aadhaar as the default unique identity, then other unique identity proofs masked and linked to Aadhaar would be used.
There are unprecedented political implications of identification based on 'biological attributes of an individual', such as employed by Aadhaar, warns Gopal Krishna.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday asked fintech firms to focus on risk management at a time when criminals are using AI to mimic voices, clone identities and create lifelike videos to manipulate people.
The order also highlights further disparities, citing examples of Denmark and Sweden restricting mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and rejecting late-arriving ballots regardless of postmark, while many US states have embraced widespread mail-in voting, with some accepting ballots without postmarks or those arriving well after Election Day.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a plea of Facebook Inc for transfer of cases related to demands for linking of social media profiles of users with Aadhaar number, pending before the high courts of Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh to the apex court.
Aadhaar is falling behind on technology, missing out on confidentiality and has gaps in its data archiving policy and preserving confidentiality in delivery of the cards to people, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The performance report, 'Functioning Of Unique Identification Authority Of India', tabled in Parliament on the last day of the budget session notes, assigning a unique identity to all resident Indians was supposed to be the key feature of Aadhaar. But "There were instances of issue of Aadhaar with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaar on faulty biometrics and documents". It says close to half a million such records had to be cancelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India up to 2016.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
The consortia include algorithm and system integration providers.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) set up recently by the government, will establish an online data base with identity and biometric details of Indian residence and provide enrolment and verification services across the country.
The government on Tuesday gave in-principle approval for adoption of standardised approach for collection of demographic and biometric attributes, including iris scan, of residents by various bodies for the UID project.
UID project was launched by the UPA government in 2009.
UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, in an interview to CNN-IBN, says that Aadhaar enabled service delivery is a far more effective way to fight corruption.
Since the first Aadhaar number was issued in September 2010, more than 1.33 billion Aadhaar cards have been generated till June 2022. With the Aadhaar enrolment of adult Indians nearing 100 per cent, the main objective of the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), which was to give Unique Identification numbers (UID) to all residents of India, is almost achieved, said a senior government official. "Enrolment will now be much more update-based, because people keep updating their mobile numbers and addresses.
The government has amended Aadhaar regulations, specifying that supporting documents need to be updated "at least once" by Aadhaar holders on completion of 10 years from enrolment date.
"Aadhaar Act has withstood the judicial scrutiny and the purpose of the Act is legitimate," it said.
Expressing serious concern over some social media platforms not being able to trace the originator of a message or an online content, a bench of justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said the government must step in now.
In a serious data breach, personally identifiable information of 815 million Indians has been up on the dark web for sale, according to a report by US-based cybersecurity firm Resecurity. Details such as Aadhaar and passport information along with names, phone numbers and addresses are available for sale online, it has said.
Now you can check your Aadhaar authentication history online to track if anyone misused your unique identity.
With terror groups misusing Aadhaar to camouflage the identity of their Pakistani cadres, the Jammu and Kashmir police will request the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to strengthen safety features of the biometric ID, officials have said.
After the publication of the final list of NRC, those people whose name will figure in it will be given usual Aadhaar number as applicable to legal residents in the country.
The persistence with Aadhaar, to the exclusion of all other identity systems, is a dangerous path and should be avoided if the risks of digital vulnerability are to be eliminated. Till such time that the ownership of the Aadhaar system is transferred to an independent body, concerns over Aadhaar's digital vulnerability will persist, says A K Bhattacharya.
Aadhaar is something that had never been done by any government before, not even in a rich country
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
The linking of biometric UID/Aadhaar number to all public services makes "We, the People of India" worse than slaves, says Gopal Krishna.
The government has initiated a series of measures, including allowing re-verification at subscribers' doorstep and One Time Password (OTP) based authentication of existing users, to make the entire exercise easier for telecom subscribers.
A biometric sensor in a laptop or tablet computer scans the unique pattern of veins in a person's palm to verify their identity, the Telegraph reported.
The attorney general told the apex court that the invasion of privacy was very minimal in Aadhaar and it may not even be considered as an invasion.
Suggesting the bill is in line with the apex court judgment, Prasad said people of India have accepted Aadhaar. The bill proposes to allow voluntary use of Aadhaar number for authentication and identity proof in opening of bank accounts and procuring of mobile phone connections. The Bill also seeks to give a child an option to exit from the biometric ID programme on attaining 18 years of age, while stipulating stiff penalties for violation of norms set for use of Aadhaar and violation of privacy.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
India does not have a stringent privacy or data protection Act.
The amendment says that UIDAI can now give directions as it may consider necessary to any entity in the Aadhaar ecosystem
Amidst leakage of files from the Prime Minister's Office and leakage of public money in scam after scam in the Congress-led government, the claim of attempting to reduce leakage in the system by using questionable plumbers like Nandan Nilekani using UIDAI does not inspire even an iota of confidence, says Gopal Krishna
How can Aadhaar be deemed 'voluntary' if service delivery is being made dependent on it, asks Gopal Krishna
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
'Why does a State that sees a national security issue at every turn not recognise the seriousness of the data from sensitive databases being breached?'
The UIDAI, set up in 2009, will manage the generation and authentication of Aadhaar numbers.
The intial round of efforts did not achieve the objectives fully.
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