March,31,2017:
A letter written by Government confirms the data has been leaked online.
How safe is your biometric data? With the Aadhaar, you have given your fingerprints and iris scans to Government.
This gives an individual a ‘unique’ identity. But what if the details of your Aadhaar get leaked?
In the recent past, there have been several cases of the UID data being compromised with. While the Government has constantly denied any possibility of compromise.
The New Indian Express published on Friday a report on how NDA government has acknowledged that personal identity of the individuals, including Aadhaar number and other sensitive information, has been leaked to public domain.
A letter written by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which the Express claims to have accessed, confirms that data, which Government has been cautiously guarding, has been leaked online.
“There have been instances wherein the personal identity or information of the residents, including the Aadhaar number and the demographic information and the other sensitive personal data such as bank account details etc. collected by various Ministries/Departments… has been reportedly published online and is accessible through an easy online search,” Archana Dureja, a Scientist in Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
“Publishing information like the Aadhaar number along with the name, date of birth, address etc. is a clear contravention of the provisions of Aadhaar Act, 2016 and is punishable with imprisonment of up to three years,” the letter further stated.
On Wednesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, defended the mandatory use of the Aadhaar amid Opposition’s concern over privacy and data security.
After his predecessor, P Chidambaram, raised fiasco related to Former Cricket Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Aadhaar details being leaked.
“If firewalls can be broken and hacking can take place, then the hacking will take place anywhere. It is not a ground that hacking takes place only because Aadhaar is there,” Jaitley argued, replying on Finance Bill debate in the Rajya Sabha.
Finance Minister further added that government feels there is no harm in expanding usage of Aadhaar. “The fact that the technologies can be breached is no argument to not use the Aadhaar”.
With over a billion Indians possessing an Aadhaar card in 2017, data theft issue can turn into a mammoth crisis for the Modi Government that has been aggressively pushing for its adoption across the services and platforms and for citizens who have linked their bank accounts and other sensitive information with Aadhaar card.
With inputs from Business-Standards.com
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