Is Aadhaar a holy cow above criticism?
Researchers and journalists in India have learnt it from the school of hard knocks -- Aadhaar is a holy cow above criticism. And those who pointed out loopholes and data breach in the biometric-based identification scheme have been harassed and intimidated with criminal cases, reported news agency Reuters on Tuesday based on victims' testimonies.
The newspaper was accused by the authority of cheating by impersonation and forgery of documents.
A Bengaluru-based researcher who contributed to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) report last year, which claimed a major Aadhaar data breach, told the news agency that they were not new to government officials visit but now they are being repeatedly harassed.
UIDAI sent the CIS a legal notice within days, said Srinivas Kodali, one of the authors of the report. The notice alleged that some of the data cited in the report would only be available if the site had been accessed illegally. The UIDAI wrote that the people involved had to be “brought to justice.”
Keeping their identity undisclosed, critics also complained of surveillance by government authorities. "Police visits do happen a few times. Other times from Home ministry. It was intimidating," said one of the researchers to Reuters.
Another person interviewed by the agency claimed to have been put under continuous surveillance. Police officers asked questions like "How was that trip to Turkey," to make it clear the subjects were watched, the report quoted researcher as saying.
Earlier, the UIDAI had filed an FIR against a CNN-News 18 journalist after the television network aired a segment showing that it was possible to obtain two separate Aadhaar enrollment numbers with the same set of biometrics.
The Delhi police last year had registered the first case under violation of Aadhaar Act 2016 against Sameer Kochhar, an entrepreneur-writer who runs a Gurgaon-based think tank called Skoch Development Foundation , for allegedly spreading rumours on various social networking sites that the Aadhaar ecosystem is vulnerable. The complaint said that wrote a misleading article against the Aadhaar ecosystem and also uploaded a video to substantiate his claims.
The UIDAI found the video and the article to be misleading and filed an FIR with the cyber cell of the Delhi police. In his article Kochhar had claimed that the Aadhaar ecosystem is flawed, vulnerable, has very poor security, and can be easily hacked.
He had also written that India was being taken for a ride by those with vested interest on Aadhaar enabled payment. He has further stated that the national security is at stake.
The government, however, has maintained it stand on the authentication and safety of citizens' data under its key identification scheme.