Research
Digital Identity
THE AADHAAR JUDGMENT USES THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY TEST IN TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAYS
Rishab Bailey and Smriti Parsheera
The Scroll, 27 September, 2018.
Released soon after the Supreme Court's verdict in the Aadhaar case, this piece examines how the different judges applied the tests of legality, legitimate aim and proportionality in their analysis of Aadhaar. We discuss the significant divergence in the judicial opinions, not only in terms of legal analysis, but also in the judges' factual understanding of Aadhaar. This highlights the challenges of using the judicial route for the determination of complex technology related problems.
OPEN DATA AND DIGITAL IDENTITY: LESSONS FOR AADHAAR
Amba Kak, Smriti Parsheera, Vinod Kotwal
International Telecommunications Union's Kaleidoscope Conference, Nanjing, China, November 2017.
Aadhaar, the largest national biometric system in the world, has been lauded for its promise to bring effciencies to government service delivery, and the stimulus to private sector innovation. Yet it is contested and criticised for the vulnerabilities created by biometric data, potential threats to privacy and exclusion. However, in all of this, there has been relatively less exploration of the 'open data' possibilities from the Aadhaar ecosystem.
Every day, large volumes of data are being generated through the use of Aadhaar-enabled authentication and eKYC systems, both by government and private entities. The challenge now is to find ways to nudge the UIDAI and all users of Aadhaar towards greater sharing of data, in privacy-protecting ways that do not create risks for Aadhaar-number holders. We propose an implementation framework that can achieve these goals by leveraging the existing provisions of the Aadhaar Act to create an open data ecosystem that balances the needs of openness and privacy.